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

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

#221

Post by hdkrgr »

joecot wrote: post #55
narag wrote: post #23

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 deal with the same problem with fullname@gmail. My name is very common, surprisingly so if you're not Italian. I get emails for: * A Joe who runs a lego engineering team at his high school * A Joe who goes to bible study in Utah * A Joe who is building a house in Victoria Australia (I'm so familiar with him/others screwing up his email that I can forward it to him and his wife easily.

For me, it's a Shawn in Colorado who goes to bible study, renovates houses, and signs (me!) up for every Republican newsletter he can find.

Also: When I use Facebook's feature "show data that others have uploaded about you" (or similar), it is full of this guy's stuff that was provided to facebook (and attributed to me) by businesses this guy has relationships with.

Nothing I can do to remove it.

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

#222

Post by mriet »

The SMTP standard allows you to add a "suffix" to part of your email address that is ignored when delivering the message.

I never give out my raw email address, I use: - name+twitter@gmail.com for twitter - name+amazon@gmail.com for amazon - name+hacknews@gmail.com for HN etc

Makes it very easy to track down who sold out me email -- and filter on it.

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

#223

Post by Arnavion »

YPPH wrote: post #213
bunnyfoofoo wrote: post #162

Just as a heads up, Zillow will ban your account if you use zillow@domain for violating their terms. Happened to me in March 2021.

Yikes, I use service@domain quite often. I didn't give thought to this possibility. I'm quite sure the reason will be that this service emails others on "your behalf" and probably does something like placing your email address in the "From" field or in the body of correspondence. I assume they are concerned about phishing or catfishing emails purporting to be from the service. This doesn't appear to be an adequate so…

Something like $(hex(hmac(secret_key, service)))@domain could solve that. It would also mean service can't pretend to be another-service@domain when spamming you.

Though who knows, maybe hex addresses will look fake / malicious and trigger a ban anyway.

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

#224

Post by hdkrgr »

For me, it was Foodora Germany (before they merged with / were sold to whoever owns the brand now). I pointed this out to their support as soon as I started getting spam on my foodora-exclusive email. They politely told me to go tf away.

18 months later, they announced a major security breach that they had "just learned about". https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/foodora-data-brea...

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

#225

Post by black_puppydog »

mriet wrote: post #222

The SMTP standard allows you to add a "suffix" to part of your email address that is ignored when delivering the message. I never give out my raw email address, I use: - name+twitter@gmail.com for twitter - name+amazon@gmail.com for amazon - name+hacknews@gmail.com for HN etc Makes it very easy to track down who sold out me email -- and filter on it.

I just have a shell alias "email" that randomly generates me one. It generates completely random base64 strings, no "name" part or such. Together with an addon for thunderbird to always answer with the sender address that was used to receive a mail, this makes for a very seamless experience.

If I want to see who leaked my address I just search my email archive to see where I first used it. Also of course this means using a password manager. I opt for keepassxc.

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

#226

Post by Matsta »

rahoulb wrote: post #217
Matsta wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn sells all your data via their sales navigator tool. The more you pay, the more data you can get.

Most of what I'm getting is pure spam stuff - nowhere near related to anything business. I do get a lot of business spam to other email addresses I have on LinkedIn but that's all vaguely relevant (no I don't want a website building, nor am I interested in video marketing).

I also get heaps of crap like that. Mostly I get people trying to sell me "leads" and "lists" which I imagine half of them are from breaches or just passed on a zillion times so their open/bounce rate must be atrocious.

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

#227

Post by hdkrgr »

linsomniac wrote: post #49
mynegation wrote: post #39

Ah, finally, my time to shine. Amazingly - not too many, given that I use hundreds of unique emails. Tbh this confuses the hell out of people when I give a CSR at AcmeBoutique the address AcmeBoutique@myowndomain.com The offenders that I remember: - Men’s Health magazine - local gym - online flower shop - agency that at the time handled visa applications for a local Indian consulate - couple of infoproducts from Prod…

I once had a irate business owner call me after I placed an order, demanding to know why their business name was in my e-mail address. After I explained it: "That's pretty clever."

When I was studying abroad, I lived in a temporary student dorm that was placed in an industrial district with a special permit from the government.

I tried to order a textbook online and my transaction got flagged as suspicious, so I had to call a support person, and he wasn't having it. - foreign credit card - address marked as non-residential area - sketchy email-address using their company name

Had to take the bus to a bookstore.

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

#228

Post by ben_w »

mriet wrote: post #222

The SMTP standard allows you to add a "suffix" to part of your email address that is ignored when delivering the message. I never give out my raw email address, I use: - name+twitter@gmail.com for twitter - name+amazon@gmail.com for amazon - name+hacknews@gmail.com for HN etc Makes it very easy to track down who sold out me email -- and filter on it.

Frustratingly, this is not as universally supported as it should be.

Back in 2018 I bought a plane ticket from Eurowings and I gave them an email address with that pattern, and while they were happy to accept the email address on the booking page and take my money, the ticket and login systems didn’t, and I had to get a refund and a much more expensive last-minute ticket at the airport.

(The customer support person also managed to spell my name wrong when I contacted them).

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

#229

Post by richrichardsson »

narag wrote: post #23

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 got sent a ton of (quite private) PII from T-Mobile in Holland for some poor schmuck who can't understand that his email address is not a.byss@gmail.com, or alternatively isn't actually putting an email address and some other idiot is deciding, "This guy is called Adrian Byss, his email is probably a.byss@gmail.com". I've had the email abyss@gmail.com* since not long after gmail became available to the public. If I had less scruples I could easily have stolen this man's identity with the amount of information they sent.

* obviously this is not my email address, but it demonstrates how the situation arose.

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