Twoplustwo passes our email addresses on to spam sites?

[PartyGirlUK]

I had an email address set up for a particular purpose, went 4 months with no spam. Set up a gimmick account recently, used this email address for the 2p2 account, next day started getting spam. Just a coincidence?

[Sniper]

Most likely coincidence... unless you set the email address on the account to be viewable?

Link to 2+2 privacy policy (http://www.twoplustwo.com/privacy.html)

[Phil153]

Sounds like a coincidence. I've never had spam in two email accounts, and I've been here for over a year.

[bigballz]

Don't create gimmick accounts?

[Dynasty]

I would PM Mat Sklansky about this.

[MicroBob]

I would doubt they have access to it...but my registered e-mail address on here is ancient and I haven't used it for years so can't really say.


In related news, I got an e-mail from the checkraised site a few days ago and have no idea how I got on their list.

[IndyGuy]

I have my own domain, and registered as twoplustwo@mydomain.com (a unique addres I've never used before or since). I have never gotten any email other than the original registration confirmation at that email address. Certainly anecdotal, but true.

I do this on almost every site, so I have some validity to my anger when I think someone's sold my address. And it allows me to set up an alias for that address that can catch all the spam.

[Mike Haven]

You're a frickin genius, IndyGuy.

[IndyGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
You're a frickin genius, IndyGuy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I've been doing this since April 1999. I'm not anal enough to read the privacy policy of every company I do business with or register at. I always forbid companies from sharing my info with partners, but I allow them to contact me themselves sometimes (when I am interested in whatever I was signing up for).

In that time, there's only two examples of spamming I've gotten from legitimate companies. Both came probably 3+ years after I registered and were what I'd term "stupid spam" (e.g. Nigerian scam) rather than stuff that they thought might be relevant (e.g. "we thought you were mistaken when you said we couldn't share info with partners").

I would probably attribute those spams, which started suddenly with a bunch (no idea if they've stopped since I blocked the addresses), to malware or a compromised database rather than the company selling the info. Most legit companies have too much to lose to willfully sell out their customers; that backlash would be hard to handle, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who handles mail in this fashion.

[MicroBob]

I don't use different e-mail addresses all the time.
But I do sometimes make a little meaningless typo in my address.

For example, when I got junk-mail addressed to apartment 'Numer 8' (instead of 'Number 8' or #8) I knew they somehow got my name and info from my UB account.
Perhaps a cust-serv person who left for a different company and just grabbed the mailing list with him.



Most alarmingly, I got a post-card last week for some sportsbetting service.
It was not addressed to my name though.
The name on the address was my PASSWORD.


I used the same password (or a version of it) on a few different sports-betting sites so don't know which one it was that got a hold of this.


All of my account balances seem fine though.



This isn't related to the 2+2 situation that indyguy describes. But I thought it would chime-in and mention that I actually have done something similar with my accounts occasionally just to check.


Indyguy - is there any chance that you gave your e-mail to anybody? is there any chance that it even briefly showed up in your profile?
I have a hard time believing that 2+2 would do this. If they did then I would think we would have heard about it from others by now.

[IndyGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
<snip>
This isn't related to the 2+2 situation that indyguy describes. But I thought it would chime-in and mention that I actually have done something similar with my accounts occasionally just to check.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting stuff. I hadn't done it to physical addresses like that before.

[ QUOTE ]
Indyguy - is there any chance that you gave your e-mail to anybody? is there any chance that it even briefly showed up in your profile?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope, and nope. But I think you're confusing me with the original poster and meant to ask him that. Correct?

[ QUOTE ]
I have a hard time believing that 2+2 would do this. If they did then I would think we would have heard about it from others by now.

[/ QUOTE ]

There would be large outcry, but someone would still need to be the first to post about it.

[MicroBob]

Sorry, you are correct that I mixed you up with the OP.

Reason I did it to my physical address is so that it wouldn't be EXACTLY the same as a previous account I had their before.
(no ZJ jokes please...I'm not the only one not on my original account on a site or two)

[Elevens]

You can always use a "fake" email address at dodgeit.com (http://www.dodgeit.com/). You can't send from this address, but you can check email on any made-up address at that site.

[astroglide]

[ QUOTE ]
You're a frickin genius, IndyGuy.

[/ QUOTE ]

i did this with one of my domains for many, many years. the problem was that the domain was www.badbeat.com (http://www.badbeat.com), which i sold a few months ago. i ran some scripts on my email archives and ended up with hundreds of unique addresses. i went through all of the real ones and changed my registered address. this literally took days. if i didn't do it, the new owner of the domain could simply "request a lost password" and potentially go to town with stored information (credit cards, etc).

i'm never doing that again.

[IndyGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
i did this with one of my domains for many, many years. the problem was that the domain was www.badbeat.com (http://www.badbeat.com), which i sold a few months ago. i ran some scripts on my email archives and ended up with hundreds of unique addresses. i went through all of the real ones and changed my registered address. this literally took days. if i didn't do it, the new owner of the domain could simply "request a lost password" and potentially go to town with stored information (credit cards, etc).

i'm never doing that again.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I can see the problem with that. My domain is in the form of firstnamelastname.com. I have a fairly unique last name, and as far as I can tell there are only two others that share my full name (excluding middle the name). So I'm certain I'll never feel like parting with the domain.

In fact, the main reason to register the domain like I did was for this purpose. My university email address was going to expire and I needed to move on to something else.

[iSTRONG]

[ QUOTE ]

In related news, I got an e-mail from the checkraised site a few days ago and have no idea how I got on their list.

[/ QUOTE ]

They're the same guys as raketracker.com... you're probably signed up with them.