181–190 of 444 posts
U.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.
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 names…
I was getting some dude's email for about 7 years. Started with newsletters and discussion threads for a journalism guild and a teacher's union. I found that amusing and left it, but one day emailed whoever was in charge and let them know I'm not the intended recipient. Stopped for a while and then it started again and I ignored it. But in the last few years I started getting hotel reservations, golf course membershi…
I once got someone and their family's Disney World booking details sent to @. It was a real thing, I could click the link and go view their booking at the official website. I have no idea what made that person to type out as their email, the domain is not even close to any publicly hosted email services or any company names. I kept getting more notifications of the upcoming Disney World trip so I ended up disabling that particular address so that those emails bounce.
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 names…
Over a year ago, I noticed that somebody's paypal was set to my gmail account. They had also used my account for payments to Donald Trump (I was getting hilariously desperate and pleading messages for more donations) Banggood, and Amigo Loans (as guarantor)
I was able to get information about different addresses they have lived (Ireland - not sure how many Trump supporters live in Ireland, which was weird), what other email addresses they had, etc.
In the end, I logged into their paypal (surprisingly easy) and changed their email address to the correct email address, and emailed them their new password.
I still get the odd one-off email from other places, such as a damp report for a property in Hemel Hempstead, but at least I haven't had any more paypal messages. I sometimes wonder about the legality of what I did - obviously I did nothing malicious, but I suspect it contravenes the letter of at least one law. But the thought of being made in some way responsible for the security of someone else's finances filled me with dread.
195 x+kickstarter@xxx 57148 x+newrelic@xxx The rest doesn't even register.
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.
This is a phishing attack.
After a while I talked with one of those customers and they knew about it. It was "an email that got compromised".
Eg. one of their employees did fall for the phish and opened the email, clicked the link, opened the binary. Got infected and (a part of?) their inbox uploaded to the spammer. That is then used to send out new targeted phishing attacks where the name is spoofed, but send from another victim of theirs. Pretty effective phishing attack it seems. Took me a bit before I realized what I was looking at as the email seemed to come from that customer. It was only because it was a bit weird that I noticed things being off like that the email address itself was different.
auction.com - absolutely resells your email for years to come, thanks whoever subscribed to that.
The RNC is way worse than the DNC, but both resell their lists quite a bit for political purposes. Voter registration similar, but I think that's just open records stuff.
But a lot of failed double-opt-in. Massive amounts of it.
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 names…
> where all the spam comes from The problem is the word spam. What you describe, misdirected mail from completely legal businesses is not really spam, even if it is junk for you personally. There is aggressive marketing of very vaguely related products you have actually registered for. There is marketing of illegal products mostly using harvested addresses. There is phishing often using stolen addresses. If you want…
Unsolicited commercial messages.
If the actual receiver didn’t solicit the message, it is spam. It doesn’t matter if the business is legitimate or not, if anything it makes it worse because the FTC occasionally does fine companies for sending spam.
Legally, you have to verify the email address before sending any further messages. If you don’t, you open yourself up to some serious fines if and when the FTC or whomever decides they want to make an example of you.
Earlier 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.
As someone who has done this too, I wouldn't be surprised if it violates some misuse of computers act - but I'd rather that than be responsible for the security of someone else's finances
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you give a rough time period for when you set up their accounts and how old the accounts are now? Just trying to get an idea of if this is still happening even now.
"Just trying to get an idea of if this is still happening even now." Do you think the spammers retired? I doubt it, there is only a shift towards trying to get more phone numbers instead of email.