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Thread: How Did They Get My Email?

  1. #1
    The Dragon Lady Dani Oliver's Avatar
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    Default How Did They Get My Email?

    Not quite fully awake, I set off to check my email this morning -- something I haven't done in a while. I rarely get email these days because I don't give out my email address to anyone. Why? Because the only people I encourage contact with are those who are already connected with me via Facebook. It's just easier for me to maintain contact like this.

    But going through my email, I noticed that I'm getting a lot of these annoying messages that I've managed to get rid of on Facebook. You know the ones, "Hi I'm [insert fake name] and I read your profile on Facebook and want to be your friend. Send me email at [scammer email address]."

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    I wrote about this on Facebook several months back, but some Negative Ninny who I had learned to tolerate/ignore thought I was being unkind to some poor person who just wanted to be my friend, and reported the post, unfriended then blocked me. Good riddance. I hope your inbox is full of new friend invites from these very same people. Good luck with that.

    But for those of you who are getting these same kinds of emails in your inbox, in short... don't email these people back. It's a scam. I'm too tired at the moment to rewrite that article. And since I didn't expect to have it reported and deleted, I didn't save it to anywhere other than Facebook. A mistake I won't make again.

    But back to the issue at hand. Why am I getting these unsolicited "friend requests" sent to my private email address?

    My email addy on Facebook is hidden to everyone but me. It's like that for a reason. Let me explain. Due to some well-meaning friends dispensing my private email address in the form of mass emails, without my permission, displaying it for everyone to see... my email address was junked. *sigh* When friends asked for my email address it always came with this request: "Never give this out to anyone without my permission". Folks just don't seem to understand that this includes adding my name to a list that everyone else on that list can see. You've just basically given my email address to a whackload of your friends, strangers to me, who might forward that email on to all their friends... some of which may be scammers -- because let's face it, "Hi I want to be your friend" seems to be good enough for most folks and BAM there you go, another nice, well-intentioned action gets you on a spammer or scammer's mass emailing list. And thanks for pulling me along with you. Whoa. Slow down, Duggy. *deep breath*

    The fact is, I want to know how people are getting my email address when I'm not handing it out to anyone, and rarely use it to register anywhere. So I googled the following question (again, I'm half asleep here and haven't even got my first coffee into me yet).

    GOOGLE: how are people getting my email by me liking a page on facebook?

    Now the reason I added that last part "...by me liking a page on facebook" is because I'm sitting here looking at emails sent to me on behalf of someone whose page I liked. As my email address is private and viewable only by me, how is this person emailing me? And why is it coming from someone else's name/company?

    Funny thing is one of the first links Google presented me with was one of those "advice articles" that inevitably leads to a sales pitch for something else. And the thing they're pitching is the name of the company that is already emailing me on this other person's behalf. Awesome. Not impressed. How did I get on this mailing list. I'm not that easily duped! Am I?

    Well yes I am.

    A couple of weeks back I followed a link to an article of interest, and was reading it when a popup... (See? Right there my spidey senses should have warned me danger was imminent)... offered me a free ebook if I entered in my email address. @#$!!! Yeah, I know better than that. But it just... GAH! Listen to me about to list of all the excuses/reasons other people rhyme off to us while we're fixing their computers after a hijacking or infection by doing something very similar to what I just did.

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    So now this company has my email address and coincidentally I've started getting "Hi I like your profile" messages in my private email inbox. Lesson Learned. You can never be too careful when handing out your email address on the internet.

    Now I have to look into this site that I freely shared my email with and ask them to remove me from this mailing list they've put me on without my consent and knowledge. It's a pity too, because the site offers great health-related articles... which, by the way, is another trick advertisers use to gain your trust while slipping you the mickey. I feel so violated.

    So yeah... if it's offering you free stuff for entering in your email, ask yourself this: "Is it worth the junk mail you're about to subject yourself to?" For me, it wasn't. It wasn't even a book it was a one-page article in PDF format. I'm such a dork.

    Think before you sink.
    Duggy aka The Angry Bunny




  2. #2
    DragonShadow Member Kevin Kennedy's Avatar
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    Default Re: How Did They Get My Email?

    There's also companies that sell your info in general... once your info is in their hands it's put out there and sold again and again...

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