flooz Posted July 21, 2006 Share Posted July 21, 2006 :angry: I had remained completely spam free for 2 years, being very careful about using my e-mail address. Until one day, I registered with a web site which I thought would be ok, and it wasn't. I am 100% certain that it was this organisation that has 'sold' my e-mail address. Is there anywhere I can report this for investigation? Many thanks for anyone taking the time to reply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted July 22, 2006 Share Posted July 22, 2006 :angry: I had remained completely spam free for 2 years, being very careful about using my e-mail address. Until one day, I registered with a web site which I thought would be ok, and it wasn't. I am 100% certain that it was this organisation that has 'sold' my e-mail address. Is there anywhere I can report this for investigation? <snip> ...IANAL so I am not sure, but it seems to me that the answer is that what they did was not illegal, unless their Privacy Terms says that they will not do that. ...How are you able to be 100% certain about who "sold" your e-mail address? If you thought that the organisation to which you refer was ok but wasn't, perhaps another organisation you thought was ok wasn't and it was this second organisation that "sold" your e-mail address? <g> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Betsy Posted July 22, 2006 Share Posted July 22, 2006 How frustrating for you! Many people use sneakemail for registration on websites so that they do know exactly who compromised their address. Or they use one email address for personal email and have other hotmail or yahoo or gmail accounts to register on the web or to buy things on the internet. If one of them gets compromised, then it can be abandoned. The spam filters at hotmail are pretty aggressive - I have them on 'low'and get almost no spam for an account that was mostly spam before hotmail started using filters. I don't know about yahoo and gmail. There is not anything you can do except write letters of complaint and dissatisfaction mentioning that you will tell everyone you know not to use that site. If it was a violation of their privacy policy, perhaps the FTC would be interested. However, as Steve points out you don't have positive proof (the way you would if you used sneakemail or another unique email address). You could be getting spam because one of your correspondents got a virus. My email address that I was very careful with, had no spam until after I was hit with a spate of virus emails. I didn't get infected, but my email address was in someone's computer who did. Miss Betsy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petzl Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 Probably a good idea to change your log-in password as well? Suggest you add the last two numbers of phone number to existing one (beginning or end of) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jank1887 Posted July 24, 2006 Share Posted July 24, 2006 You could be getting spam because one of your correspondents got a virus. I use sneakemail regularly and this has happened to me twice. I was registered with two relatively respectable companies, using unique sneakemails, and started getting spam. (the first company, about a year ago. the second, about a month or so.) In both cases I fired off complaint emails to the companies in question. They usually respond with "it wasn't us, must have been you. maybe you have a virus or malware... etc." After some back and forth, turns out they had it scraped via virus/malware from their systems. Easy enough to dump and change a sneakemail, but shows how easy it is for one to get grabbed. I think I had a thread on one case Here: who would spam a sneakemail? Unless you can somehow find justification for going legal on them, there's not much you can do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btech Posted July 24, 2006 Share Posted July 24, 2006 I get pissed when I see spam actually sent to my CESMAIL.NET account, because I don't EVER put it on anything and never use it... it's simply a log on name for my SCMail. I can only assume that spammers are getting these Spamcop reports, taking the addresses and using them. That's another problem... when there's black hats and shady 'advertising' companies that get these spam reports, they dno't take the address off, they now have verification that the address is valid and in use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flooz Posted July 25, 2006 Author Share Posted July 25, 2006 thanks for all your answers. the reason I say i am 100% sure of who it was the 'sold' my e-mail address is, i'll admit, based on receiving a whole host of spam within 24 hours of registering with one particular site. I am very cautious about using my e-mail ISP address for log-ins, generally using a hotmail one; on my one 'lapse' of trust - and it's getting worse i've got more domains in my 'blocked senders' list then I thought possible (outlook express user). I thought I'd be able to report it purely because I thought spam was supposed to be illegal now, although the culprit isn't the one sending the stuff. I have complained to them, but received no response, which doesn't surprise me. I guess it'll be a change of e-mail address for me shortly. I'm afraid all this talk of sneake-mail and stuff is a big beyond me. I'm afraid i'm not technically minded at all, knowing just about enough to operate a pc and keep 'safe'. Anything above that, is beyond my intelligence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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