Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 444 posts

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

#71

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

Same.

I very rarely receive spam on the email address I used to post on the Debian bugtracker, and on the generic address I give to individuals. Apart from that, none of the specific email addresses are spammed.

It's been almost 6 years now. I sometimes understand why I receive some infrequent broadcast mail thanks to the specific address I used to subscribe.

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

#72
post #55
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.

In my personal metaverse, I'm really into falconry (I've ordered several leather falcon hoods), I have a commercial truckers license, I'm part of a pushy childrens' soccer league, and am eagerly planning a trip to the holy land. I did get an invite from one of them to play golf together in Wales.

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

#73

Netflix, Uber, Airtel, Reliance Jio, Paytm, Swiggy, almost every bank and neo bank (India) I’ve tried, hospitals and diagnostic centres (I’ll be shocked and devastated if they’re not selling my health data to everybody who’s willing to pay a paisa or more), insurance provider, Coinbase, PayPal, TrueCaller, Facebook, Dell, Amazon, LinkedIn, Amex etc are few I remember. And the great people who think it’s okay to use t…

> apparently my friends aren’t lesser idiots

knowledge is power

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

#74
one of my single use emails that gets consistent spam from various places for some years now, was only used to sign up for a hostgator hosting account.

Now I can't be 100% sure - but I am 99.9% sure that was the only place that addy was used.

I have several that get spammed heavy that were used to sign up at various forums some years ago as well.

I just starting sorting these into folders more last week, trying to remember the ones I didn't have ti mess with that were already going to folders - but that's on a different system.

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

#75
Public libraries, who provided patron email addresses (supposedly collected to send overdue and renewal notices, etc.) to municipality "newsletter" spam lists.

I assume they'd also happily hand over a list of all the books you've checked out and whether any of them were overdue.

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

#76
I use a pattern of somecompany@mydomain.example for everyone I deal with.

Never made any effort to determine if they were leaks or sold, but here are the ones I've had to send to /dev/null over the years due to obvious spam.

adobe, godaddy, ebay, sirius, vonage, dzone, snapfish, walgreens, US postal service;they just continued their model of selling physical address data into the online space. Seems to have been sold to typical catalog vendors, JC penny, crate and barrel, etc.

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

#78

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."

HAHAHA Same but it was in the store of Sixt (a european car renting firm)

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

#79
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time I can I login to their accounts and update the email to null@void.com .

You’re probably joking, but in case you aren’t, don’t put in an address for a registered domain like void.com, as you’ll just be redirecting the spam to them. Instead use the reserved domain example.com.

I just use the domain of the site the account belongs to. If I'm getting really naughty, I will put sales@

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

#80
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…

Same here. I thought I was lucky when I snagged one of the first GMail invites and was able to pick a 5-letter user name. Oops: https://i.imgur.com/Y5c1iIt.png

Same. I even paid about $10 on eBay to snag an early invitation.
Post reply on HN