We’ve all experienced this. You sign up for a brand new email account, maybe having switched internet providers. You are getting no spam because nobody knows your email address. But, over time, you begin to get more and more spam until, before too long, its as if you never changed your email address. It can leave you baffled. How the hell did they get my email address?
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There are many ways you could end up on a spam list. If you are an internet surfer and enter your email address into various websites, that could be your opening. It is always best to check out a website’s privacy policy before giving them your email address. Ensure that they will not give your email address to any third party.
The most common way that spammers get your email address, though, are email harvesters. Harvesters are programs which are designed to browse the web just as a search engine’s spider would. As it does so, it searches all webpages for email addresses and records those email addresses into a database. So, if you run a website and your email address is posted on the website, you can bet your life on the fact that it will be picked up by an email harvester and find its way to a spammer’s email list. But, even if you don’t host your own website, it can still happen. Ever posted in an online forum? Some forum packages do not mask your email address, leaving it wide open for harvesters. If you ever posted to a newsgroup, you may have leaked your email address that way. These email catcher programs harvest Usenet posts as well. Some spammers also use websites to collect email addresses. Sites like porn sites, some dating sites, greeting card sites, joke mailing sites and other such sites sometimes serve as fronts for spammers. They run the site and when you sign up, they get your email address.
Once you’ve been picked up by one spammers, chances are you will end up on a bunch more. Spammers make common practice of buying and selling mailing lists.
Lastly, if you’ve ever gotten fed up and actually followed a spammer’s method of unsubscribing, you just confirmed your email address to them. In almost all cases, the unsubscribe notice given by a spammer is not provided in good faith. They are not likely to sit there and honestly remove your email address from their list. After all, you don’t know who they are. You can’t exactly go to the spammer’s website and complain. Instead, they get an unsubscribe notice from you and they say “Bingo!, we have a valid email address!”. You just guaranteed you will get more spam.
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