Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#1

Post by dyingkneepad » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 12:31 AM UTC

I've heard a lot about people who have catch-all email accounts and subscribe a different address to each service. So, these people may have a nice idea of who sold or leaked their email addresses based on the spam they are getting. Are you one of these people? Can you name your spammers?

As a side note, I have a friend from not-US who by mistake used a special address only for this country's IRS equivalent (he had something like "unit 12A" instead of just "unit 12"), and he would occasionally get physical spam to that address. I remembered that, then decided to ask this.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#2

Post by linsomniac » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 12:40 AM UTC

This was years ago, but I once contacted Barracuda to inquire about buying one of their Spam Firewalls. I used "myname-barracuda@mydomain". Before I even got a response from the salesperson, I got a spam e-mail to that address.

Then I got a response from the salesperson. I asked if he knew that I had started getting spam to the e-mail address that only they had, and he said there was no way that was possible.

I figured that his machine had some malware on it, and that harvested my address and sent it to the spammers. But the cynic in me wondered if they wanted to make money from selling the spammers my e-mail address AND from selling me a spam firewall.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#3

Post by jdmoreira » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 12:43 AM UTC

I use a different email for everything so I have been waiting very patiently for this and guess what… so far no one.

Absolutely no one.

And I've been using this system for over 5 years now

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#4

Post by c22 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 12:45 AM UTC

It actually happens extremely rarely, perhaps less than once a year. Though that may just be an artifact of my already heightened discretion in who I give an email address to at all.

The most recent offender was my kid's tee-ball league.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#5

Post by metalzombie » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 12:49 AM UTC

Annoyingly, park mobile. Their emails were leaked, now I get parkmobile@foo.com emails quite often.

https://considertheconsumer.com/data-breaches/parkmobile-dat...

they suck.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#6

Post by bin_bash » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 12:58 AM UTC

metalzombie wrote: post #5

Annoyingly, park mobile. Their emails were leaked, now I get parkmobile@foo.com emails quite often. https://considertheconsumer.com/data-breaches/parkmobile-dat... they suck.

I had the same experience but technically they didn't sell our email

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#7

Post by bcrl » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:00 AM UTC

Most recently I got an email that was clearly spam (had a link to a website with a .zip file that was clearly malware) that was a reply from an order I placed with a supplier a few months ago ($8,800 worth of 105Ah rackmount SLA batteries) - the entire email I had previously sent was quoted. It's pretty sad when your legitimate suppliers are getting compromised and leaking data like a sieve.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#8

Post by user3939382 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

Avery (the brand that makes those label stickers you get at Staples) spammed me even though I explicitly declined their marketing list.

Once a month or so I get unsolicited mail to my LinkedIn email address.

Other than that, I was surprised to find after a good 5 years of monitoring that I haven’t gotten spammed through unauthorized sharing of my email.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#9

Post by jeromechoo » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

I actually do this for every service I put my email down for. It’s been about 2 years since I started.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) my email has only been sold once, and it wasn’t as egregious as you might think.

Amplitude, the user analytics company, sold my address to at least 3 companies who simply started emailing me as if I’ve always been a subscriber to their newsletter.

I do use their free plan though so I’m not mad about it.

Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?

#10

Post by tom_ » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:03 AM UTC

Mostly cryptocurrency stuff in my case. Over the past 5 years, almost all of my spam (a measurable but manageable amount) has come via my old btc-e address. I've probably been getting this shit for more like 7 or 8 years in total, long since before they got shut down, and I mailed their support when it first started. They said there was definitely no hack and definitely no breach. Not sure whether that makes this worse or better ;)

I get the odd one from the address I used when buying my ledger hardware wallet in 2017. Their address list was famously leaked a while ago, and this email address was on it - luckily not my address or phone number though.

Then occasionally I get one to my amazon-specific address. I figure via one of the vendors I've ordered from via Amazon? But who knows. Bezos didn't get his billions by not trying everything.