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The immutable data they hold on us has always scared me. I have always imagined a middle man or "middle service" would be helpful. This service would be like a
by cdevs 9y ago
The immutable data they hold on us has always scared me. I have always imagined a middle man or "middle service" would be helpful. This service would be like a database and for my example I'll just use email addresses but imagine also passwords, birthdays, maiden names "encrypted of course" but that's beyond the detail I'll go into. This email service would let me tell the mailman my email is somethingUnique :myRealEmail@domain
Well if I start getting spam at somethingUnique:myRealEmail@domain then I can call the person out about it I gave it to "I'm looking at you Facebook". So some spammers now have that address but I can shut it down or change it, I also could have had a list of people who had that address and if they still use it I will still get messages. There's accountability and even though something static was given away it was only a "pointer" to a static item so that I can change the pointer. I should know who knows what, how they think they know it, have the option to take it away, etc. but that's not really possible when companies like equifax collect data on us and it never really seems like they ask, but I'm sure we signed our life away while buying a car and thinking about picking up chicks in it signing papers in a daze.
- geogriffin 9y agoI've been doing this for a few years using my own domain and "recipient_delimiter = -" in postfix and actually (annoyingly) have yet to see an email address leaked. considering all the spam i got on my Gmail address, I was thinking it would happen fast, but I guess 1) I'm probably being more careful and 2) these things take time.
- proaralyst 9y agoI got one leaked! The provider of my VPS (sold/leaked?) their entire customer base by the look of the CC field. Lots of +galaxyhostplus
- cJ0th 9y agoI experimented with different email addresses for different purposes and came to the same conclusion. Then again, perhaps SPAM isn't that lucrative anymore. You might earn much more by selling profiles these days. This only dawned on me after disqus has been hacked and 'lost' personal information such as e-mail addresses (my personal one among them). What criminals could do now is simply collect breaches, put them into a database and make "e-mail" the join criteria for a query. Based on the output they can generate comprehensive profiles of people that weren't available on the market before. Date from 'shop a' may reveal my DOB and my real name, Data from disqus allows them to extract what values I hold and so on... In a way they bank on not sending you spam, because if they would you may change your e-mail and they are thrown off the track ;)