I like to look at my spam mail from time to time because it’s funny and sometimes useful stuff ends up there.
I looked earlier and noticed a Nigerian Prince email referencing my username on here. I don’t use that name anywhere else, so they obviously got it from here, is that something the webmasters should know/be aware of?
I’m not that concerned about it personally because, you know, spam and all. But I don’t know if someone just sold a list of emails to people or if there was some kind of hacking thing.
In your profile, go to “User CP” in the upper left hand corner
Go to the Control Panel column on the left side
Go to “Edit Options”
Uncheck “Receive email from other members”
Save
Isn’t that option unchecked by default? Mine was unchecked and I’m sure I didn’t do it. I seem to remember when I registered the only email option that was checked was Receive Email From Administrators. Has that changed?
Ages ago I bought a domain with free email forwarding. The main purpose back then was so that if I changed my ISP, I could change the address it was forwarded to and would not have to send out an email change for my friends and subscriptions.
The past few years, though, I have been using it as a spam defense. If I for example, register to read an article on the New York Times website it’ll be with the addy nyt@<domain>.com That way if spam starts coming in to that address, whether it was sold by the original site or harvested by some sumbitch, into the cornfield it goes. If I want, I will subscribe again using nyt2 or something.
It costs a bit but in my mind $13 a year is well worth it, not even counting some of the other services rendered.
Wasn’t the SDMB user database hacked a while ago? 1 year? They asked us all to change our passwords. If someone stole the user database, they’d have your username and email.