After doing this for nearly 20 years I can say I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how rare it is to get spam unrelated to the company I gave my address to. What it’s been very useful for, in the other hand, is filtering email from companies that don’t honor their unsubscribe links or unchecking their “please send me marketing emails” boxes during signup. The common pattern is for them to invent a new kind of junk mail category and then act as though your opt-out obviously doesn’t apply to this totally new category.
Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
121–130 of 444 posts
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#122Kickstarter regularly sells my address, even soon after changing it. I don't think any other entity did that, which is mildly surprising.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. +1. My OG name email has been mistakenly registered for a PayPal account, but there's no way I can go about disavowing the account, or removing my email address from it.
I’ve had a few folks use my email. This is going to prove wildly unpopular but I just reset the password using the email, go in and delete the account (or submit a ticket with support to do so). They can make a new one with their own email if it’s important.
Not wildly unpopular with me. I’ve canceled multiple Netflix accounts using my $firstInitial$lastName@gmail account. My excuse if they ever challenged me would be to say I thought it was fraudulent because I didn’t set it up and I didn’t want my email to be the only contact method.
Edit: there is one boost mobile customer who has done this to me and I can’t figure out the exact address they used (the thing where you can add periods gives a lot of possibilities), and I really wish I could password reset and close this account because approximately every other month for years I get late payment notices, then impending cutoff notices, then cutoff notices, then “thank you for your payment your service has been restored” notices. It’s both sad and annoying and I finally just black-holed everything from boost mobile and hope I never decide to be their customer in the future because troubleshooting mail delivery problems when I’ve forgotten about this will drive me insane.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got my gmail account early and was able to get my first name at gmail.com. My name is fairly popular in my part of the world and everyone who has it uses my email address as a throwaway since they actually authenticate using a phone number. I have matrimonials, visa applications, leave applications, uber accounts, SaaS subscriptions, porn subscriptions, random newsletters and what not. My gmail account is all but u…
I have the same, but less volume than you. I've had VERY confidential mail sent to me, and one time someone even tried to send me 1500 bucks, but alas I didn't know the password for the transfer :) Sometimes I get so annoyed I do a password reset on their accounts. Gotta learn some how.
I've done that too. Password resets.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#125Just took a quick look through the spam folder and found spam (real spam, like fake fedex invoices or whatever) from:
pretty much anything vaguely related to crypto
edaboard.com
lastfm.com
pcbway.com
asus.com
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#126The sad thing is, ever since I started using unique addresses years ago, they've caught exactly no one. I get buckets upon buckets of spam, but only from the first party companies I actually have a relationship with, and zero from 'partners'. Mayhaps just having an email domain that isn't from a big webmail provider keeps out the spam? But then again, I get plenty of actual spam to my work email which I've never give…
I started getting recruiter emails coming into my work inbox. I have never given out my work email to anyone. I don't use it other than for internal company communications. They likely took my first.lastname from Linkedin and just appended @companyname.com and there you have it. Is your work email something simple like that?
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#127U.S. political campaigns are by far the worst offender. If you give your real email and phone number to one candidate, twenty unrelated candidates will contact you next cycle.
This . It's relentless. Both email and SMS spam.
With SMS, you can reply with STOP and it should take you off that list. Repeat for a few campaigns and hopefully you are done for that election cycle and get less/none in the next cycle.
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#128There are a bunch like AliExpress, eBay, Paypal and kickstarter where 3rd parties get your email address too (or used to), so you don't know which one leaked them. I tend to change the email address every few years when it gets too much and block the old ones after a while.
I suspect that most of the entries on the list got hacked. There are a few exceptions where companies do not honor unsubscribe requests and keep sending you emails or flat out sell your email address.
Here's a list that was collected over many years:
- Cory Doctorow's mailing list (twice)
- bitcard
- Achatzi, CSV direct, easynotebooks, foto-erhard, hivilux - (german online shops)
- dcemu, gbadev
- Dropbox
- funcom
- gawker
- Kimsufi and OVH
- GoodLuckBuy
- Mails listed in WHOIS
- Mails used in Yahoo groups (RIP)
- MiniInTheBox
- monster.com
- moneybookers
- pianostreet
- Usenet (duh)
- Typepad
- UnternHammer
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#129I 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 names…
> 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. +1. My OG name email has been mistakenly registered for a PayPal account, but there's no way I can go about disavowing the account, or removing my email address from it.
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: People who use different emails everywhere, who sold you to spammers?
#130I get most spam coming to my main personal email address. I've signed up for exactly nothing using it - but other people have sent me ecards (remember those?), shared things from random apps, and/or presumably had their contact lists stolen.
I had always intended to do some analysis of my catch-all address spam, but there's just so little of it that it isn't that interesting. A quick glance through my spam folder shows these have been hacked or sold emails:
Dropbox, Canada Computers, Last.fm
I've also seen a couple forum accounts in the past, but nothing else noteworthy.