Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers? • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by maxk42 » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

kodah wrote: post #17

maxk42 wrote: post #12

I used to. Stopped doing it as it was too much hassle to keep track of, but the biggest spammers were tech recruiters. I think some of them post fake jobs just so they can harvest your email address when you apply. Then that email address gets passed around on various lists for years.

There's a recruiting firm in Dallas, TX that requires you to come into their office in order to apply for a position at one of their customers. What does this meeting consist of? A literal list of PII-based questions - nothing pertaining to the role. When I called them out on this they insisted that this is how, "their process and culture" works. Also not to say this is how all recruiters work. I've spent enough time…

I've experienced similar. It's so they can tell their clients they've met with each candidate in person. Decidedly less of a selling point these days.

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

#22

Post by neogodless » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

The list is long and I'm on my phone. Several were from breaches like Adobe.com and Park mobile. MyFitnessPal. Cadillac (used email for a free brochure).

I think the real worst offender is LinkedIn. I put one email on my resume and a different one for logging in to LinkedIn that should not be public. And yet I get direct recruiter spam there all the time.

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

#23

Post by narag » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:15 AM UTC

I mostly use one single address, but I can tell you exactly where all the spam comes from: idiots whose name is the same as mine.

They give my address as if it belonged to them. Probably they created addresses like narag33@server and they believe that it's narag@server instead.

So not only I receive all the spam from dubious sites that they suscribed to, but also their legitimate mail from lists and friends.

My namesakes are idiots. But some of the companies responsible of the subscriptions, like Paypal, are assholes. They allow the creation of accounts without verifying the email, then refuse to admit it's their problem and do something about it.

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

#24

Post by sashk » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:15 AM UTC

GitHub, linkedin, couple of smaller stores, who were hacked.

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

#25

Post by rictic » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

I get some scam/phishing/malware emails sometimes from an account I've only ever used to sign up for comcast.

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

#26

Post by r3trohack3r » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

This has been my pattern ever since switching to ProtonMail. The biggest surprise for me was how little purpose it serves for spam prevention.

Coming from GMail, I expected an untenable amount of spam - but that seems to only be a GMail problem? I’ve only had two incidents of unsolicited spam from a vendor sharing my email address since moving to ProtonMail.

One I don’t remember the details but I gave a yoga accessories company my email address, like a year later I got an email addressed to that email address from a cannabis company.

The other time TicketMaster shared my email address with Warner Bros.

However my public email addresses (like the ones I use on GitHub, npm, git commits, etc) receive a lot of spam - but those are harvested, not shared.

Now my email address actually serves another purpose: limiting the ability for leaked user databases to connect my identity across providers. I’m starting to use a different username, email address, and password for every service I use that isn’t linked to my professional identity.

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

#27

Post by alibrarydweller » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

https://www.ordersnapp.com/, who do order processing for a local pizza place.

They got hacked and didn't even reset customer passwords, very glad I use unique passwords and limited the blast radius to them.

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

#28

Post by TrueGeek » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

The worst, by far, is Camping World / Good Sam. It’s just amazing how they are willing to sell my email to anyone and everyone. My local branch has a good service department though so I just setup a filter and keep going back.

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

#29

Post by nextos » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:24 AM UTC

Amazon vendors, several times.

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

#30

Post by yodon » Fri, Apr 22, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

When my kids were young, I set them up with two emails addresses: one for emailing friends, the other for emailing businesses. The assumption was this would protect their personal friend emails from spam. The reality was by the time they were older teens almost all the spam they received came in on their personal friend emails and almost none of it came on their commercial-use addresses.

My assessment was businesses were not stupid enough to sell email addresses (they knew they'd be reamed for it if word got out) but just enough of their friends' machines had sketchy browser plugins, malicious android apps, back-doored aimbot cheats, and etc harvesting contact addresses and sending the data back to spammers.