Email Spam
It never ceases to amaze me how many spam emails I receive – every single day.
But what I don’t understand is why I receive some of them.
Let me explain…
When I sign up at a new website, I always create a specific email address that I only use for that site. For example, if the site were called “Make Millions In Seconds” (I just made that up), then I might sign up using an email address called makemillionsinseconds@mydomain.com
I do this to help me filter incoming emails, and generally keep track of them all.
So, here’s the question: how come I receive a ton of emails to address such as the sample one above, as they are only meant to be used for one site (or, in some cases, a number of sites run by one person)?
Are the spammers simply guessing these email addresses? Maybe they’re combining the names of popular websites and marketers with another list of harvested email addresses / domain names? Having said that, it would seem like they guess correctly an awful lot!
Are the site owners selling, renting their customers’ and subscribers’ email addresses? If this were the case, then an awful lot of people are doing this, based on how many spam emails I receive.
Are the companies who run the email and autoresponder services doing the same? I have to say that this seems unlikely, as many of these websites use big names such as Aweber to manage their email lists, and I can’t believe that these companies would risk their business for this sort of unethical practice.
Or is it that too many people and companies are not protecting their data, and it’s just being hacked by spammers with some clever data mining tools?
Of the various options I can think of, this last one seems the most likely, but if you have any better ideas, please leave a comment below.
Tags: single day, unethical practice, data mining tools, email addresses, email lists, autoresponder servicesBELIEVE IT OR NOT:
Powered By Odd Facts