topic Re: How do spammers get your email address? in Community Chat

How do spammers get your email address?

cherry — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:30:51 GMT

I just got another email claiming I subscribed to something called yummly, and I know I didn't. I don't even know what it is. I had to unsubscribe

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

adamlambert — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:32:19 GMT

omg! I wish I knew!! I get so many emails, honestly, from hot babes who want to do things. Make it stop!! Lol

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Mom2Dogs — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:38:45 GMT

I would love to know as well..I checked my spam this morning and I had 21 messages....all junk.....dating sites, drug sales, etc....

Years ago I rarely had any spam in my spam folder, now I have junk mail all the time!

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Annabellethecat66 — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:42:32 GMT

Here's a brief answer:

Search Results

There are several common ways that spammers can get your email address: Crawling the web for the @ sign. Spammers and cybercriminals use sophisticated tools to scan the web and harvest email addresses. If you publicly post your email address online, a spammer will find it.Aug 6, 2010

How do spammers get my email address? | Microsoft Secure Blog

https://blogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/.../how-do-spammers-get-my-email-address/

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

cherry — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 02:51:01 GMT

Some guy who sent out a million emails may face 20 years in prison. He has already been fined 10 thousand dollars..

I hope he gets the whole 20 years

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4214120/World-s-eighth-worst-spammer-faces-decades-bars.html

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Alter Ego — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 03:21:09 GMT

My work email gets more interesting spam than my personal email.

Honestly, I think a disgruntled former employee did something with our email list. Most is caught by our filters - but several legit emails were also getting quarantined. We now get a list of all emails held in quarantine daily and it's so interesting to see all of the great offers on pharmaceutical enhancements and cheap iPhones that I'm missing out on!!

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

dharts — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 03:35:22 GMT

For goodness sakes, DON'T reply to any spam email. including to unsubscribe. Instead, add that email address to your blocked or spam list. When you respond, you're proving that your email address is a valid one, which to a spammer means money for selling it to other spammers. That includes unsolicited emails from what appears to be a legitimate company. You don't know who really sent that email.

And if you don't have excellent anti-virus and ant-pfishing software on your email program, you shouldn't even be reading or opening suspicious emails.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

itiswhatitis — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 03:48:02 GMT

Often times, people who get your email for legitimate reasons "sell" your email address to others. For instance, when you shop online ~ every retailer will want your email address.

I use two types of emails. One for strict and important notifications and then a web based email address that I don't care about much.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Marp — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 03:58:31 GMT

@cherry, Yummly is a recipe site.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Desertdi — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 08:09:17 GMT

@cherry wrote:
I just got another email claiming I subscribed to something called yummly, and I know I didn't. I don't even know what it is. I had to unsubscribe

@cherry My cousin has been hacked several times......and they took her entire contact list. I also once received an email from my brother-in-law, who had passed away several years prior. Needless to say, I was in SHOCK to receive an email like that...............

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Shorty2U — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 08:19:51 GMT

I think if you have facebook you get spam emails and also when you shop online they get your name. Also if you fill out anything online like maybe a survey or contest.. I got so many emails trying to sell me things that I got a new email just to email people and kept the old one just to shop! When I check the old one, I often have 400 pieces of mail to dump in days! So annoying, but I will not use my newer email to shop or then that will be filled with spam too, thus I keep both.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Group 5 minus 1 — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 15:39:07 GMT

Silly question.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

cherry — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 15:41:33 GMT

@ncascade wrote:
Silly question.

At least it wasn't a rude one. No question is silly if you don't know the answer

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

sandraskates — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 02:50:22 GMT

I'm trying to figure out how Sally Beauty Supply got me on their e-mailing list. I rarely shop there and I know I've never given it to them.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

gardenman — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 12:39:33 GMT

@itiswhatitis wrote:
Often times, people who get your email for legitimate reasons "sell" your email address to others. For instance, when you shop online ~ every retailer will want your email address.

I use two types of emails. One for strict and important notifications and then a web based email address that I don't care about much.

This is very true. In order for my dad to use his online pharmacy he had to have an e-mail account. I'd set him up an e-mail account a year or so earlier so he could receive a sports related e-mail from a statistician from a nearby school. That e-mail account sat empty and unused after that with no spam, nothing. When I had to supply his e-mail address to the online pharmacy (then Merck-Medco) his in box suddenly became flooded with offers from Canadian pharmacies and the like. It was less than a day from the time I supplied his e-mail address to them and they verified it, before the flood of spam started and it still continues now ten years after his death.

Legitimate companies that you think would never sell your e-mail address, either sell it themsevles, have an employee stealing it and selling it for personal gain, or have someone hacked into their system stealing it. It coud have just been a big old coincidence that a dormant account suddenly sprang to life with countless offers from Canadian pharmacies right after supplying the information to another online pharmacy, but I doubt it. Many of the offers from the Candian pharmacies even targeted the meds he was taking, so it was a bit questionable. Now, maybe his employer had a deal to forward his e-mail address and list of meds to Canadian pharmacies to lower their costs since drugs from Canada weren't included in their policy and they'd have to make no co-pay, but the timing and accuracy of the information from the Canadian pharmacies was quite impressive.

Someone, somewhere relayed a lot of information about him to multiple Canadian pharmacies that probably shouldn't have been done. I found it all kind of entertaining.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

Toppers3 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:30:24 GMT

@ncascade wrote:
Silly question.

It's not silly at all.

I found myself in the exact same predicament as @cherry, where I started to get much more spam in my inbox, and was trying to figure out where it was coming from.

I agree with whomever said that it was spambots as one of the reasons for the increase in spam. For me I think that it was from filling out some kind of form for something, as it must have picked out my address that way.

I personally found out that if you unsubscribe from something, that just seems to make things even worse. The best thing that I think that you can do is to report the e-mail to your spam inbox setting.

If you are getting too many spam e-mails, you can try changing your password in that particular account to try and see if that helps with decreasing the spam.

If at some point it becomes way too overwhelming and you're just really getting flooded with way too much spam, in the worst case scenario, you may end up having to close out your/that e-mail account altogether to stop the spam activity.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

CelticCrafter — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:01:37 GMT

@Shorty2U wrote:
I think if you have facebook you get spam emails and also when you shop online they get your name. Also if you fill out anything online like maybe a survey or contest.. I got so many emails trying to sell me things that I got a new email just to email people and kept the old one just to shop! When I check the old one, I often have 400 pieces of mail to dump in days! So annoying, but I will not use my newer email to shop or then that will be filled with spam too, thus I keep both.

Especially if you play any of those quizzes...ugh!

I still use old school AOL for my e-mail and have it set up so they all go right to spam.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

beckyb1012 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:17:48 GMT

My email address of about 12 years was hacked into two years ago and porn was going out to my family and friends with my address listed as the sender. Of all people my employer of twenty years was the first one to tell me. Thank goodnes he and all others knew I had been hacked. What an ordeal to get a new address and update all contacts and places like the Q.. You just go about your business for well over a decade and some how someone comes in and rips up part of your life.

Thank goodness everyone knew it was not me. They were also trying to get my contacts financial information. Never did figure out how they did it. Everyone blocked my old address and replaced with my new.

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

chickenbutt — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 18:36:06 GMT

So far, so good - for the past 10 months.

When I was with ATT, I got TONS of spam every single day. But I don't recall getting anything that said I had signed up for something that I hadn't. That could be rather concerning - either it's just spam that tries to get you to respond, or somebody else has given them your email address.

Since I've changed to charter.net I haven't gotten a single one (fingers crossed that I don't jinx myself!).

Re: How do spammers get your email address?

gardenman — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 18:54:32 GMT

@chickenbutt wrote:
So far, so good - for the past 10 months.

When I was with ATT, I got TONS of spam every single day. But I don't recall getting anything that said I had signed up for something that I hadn't. That could be rather concerning - either it's just spam that tries to get you to respond, or somebody else has given them your email address.

Since I've changed to charter.net I haven't gotten a single one (fingers crossed that I don't jinx myself!).

If you're not getting any spam, chances are your ISP is filtering it before it ever gets to you. That can be good or bad depending on their spam filters. My Verizon e-mail comes through Yahoo and their spam filters are way, way oversensitive. Lots of good stuff gets filtered out. I can find it by going directly to Yahoo and checking the spam folder there, but probably 70% of the stuff they filter out is good e-mail that I want to receive.No matter how many times I tell them stuff from Lands End and other companies isn't spam, they still plop it into the spam folder. I have to check it daily to be sure I'm not missing anything important.