I have an email address I use uniquely with Brainbench. I’ve used it for some years. I did not permit them to share it when I signed up. And now I’m getting spam to that address. Well fuck you Brainbench either for selling my address or for lax security.
At a guess, you’re in financial trouble. Well, selling my email address to spammers is really fucking likely to get you my business, isn’t it?
There’s a special pit of Hell reserved for the likes of you.
I should point out that some spammers simply send out mass mailings to randomly-generated email addresses. These mailings contain a webbug which tells the spammer when you open the mail, and that your address is therefore valid, and he then will proceed to add this address to its database. Then the flood begins. You can’t say for sure that Brainbench had anything to do with this new influx of spam.
I used to work for an ISP that administered several domains, some of which had been around for up ten years, possibly longer. We had clients constantly accuse us of selling the email lists to spammers.
Uh, no.
The domain has been around for a decade. Domain that thousands of spammers know about due to its longevity + random alpha-numeric generator = shitload of spam in your inbox.
Sorry man, that’s what you get for sticking with an ISP that didn’t go under in six months.
The ID is unique. I know where I’ve used it and therefore who released it. I haven’t yet been hit by random-ID spam. And I don’t use Outlook - I use PMMail - and am immune to webbugs from that angle. I also delete obvious spam unread.
Nope, the case is concrete.
Maybe the spammers ran their webbugs through the main deflector dish into a field of negetively charged tachyons.
That always works.
You have to remember that an email simply doesn’t go directly from your ISP to the recipients ISP. The email can take an infinite number of paths, from server to server, from router to router, between your computer and the recipients computer. It is easy to install, if you have access, a program that logs email addresses from email traffic that passes through an intermediate server or router. In fact, I hate to admit it, but I used to work for a company that did this, then sold the email addresses. It’s unlikely your ISP sold your email address.