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I remember reading a similar story in Ireland on Reddit, where a guy started receiving newsletters and advertising texts that he only ate at once during the pan
by calmoo 2y ago
I remember reading a similar story in Ireland on Reddit, where a guy started receiving newsletters and advertising texts that he only ate at once during the pandemic. Turns out the restaurant were using the contact details for Covid tracking for advertising purposes… diabolical stuff.
- bayindirh 2y agoI visited US once, for a week. I went through an E-ZPass controlled interstate once as a passenger, and gave no e-mails to anyone. Yet, I received "Pending E-ZPass payment" scam for a year. I have no further comments.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 2y agoSo how do you think the connection was made? The best I can think was your location data was sold by a company behind one of the apps on your phone.
- bayindirh 2y agoThey might have correlated my shopping data plus with my location (the state/shop I'm in), and possibly went from there. Some of my phone apps might have betrayed to me, too, but I have no idea what I had installed at that time.
- ctrlp 2y agoPossibly sold by an insider through unofficial channels?
- gruez 2y ago>I went through an E-ZPass controlled interstate once as a passenger >Yet, I received "Pending E-ZPass payment" scam for a year. I think you're overestimating how precise scammers' targeting are. They're playing a numbers game, so they're going to spam every who might have used ezpass, not carefully curate their spam list by buying real time location data from data brokers. I received phishing texts for banks that I don't have accounts for, so next time I get a phishing text for a bank that I do use, I'm not going to think my bank got breached.
- bayindirh 2y agoI think it's in the middle. I travel a lot due to work. Generally the destinations are the same, but a new country is added now and then. When I go there and come back, I also start to get spam in that country's language. I currently have English, Spanish, Dutch and Italian spam regularly in my mailboxes. They all started after I visited respected countries, and continue since I still visit them semi-regularly. That E-ZPass spam started right after I returned from US, continued for a year, ceased and didn't return. Spammers have better targeting tools than we know.
- gruez 2y ago>I currently have English, Spanish, Dutch and Italian spam regularly in my mailboxes. They all started after I visited respected countries, and continue since I still visit them semi-regularly. It's far more likely your email addresses are getting leaked by airlines/hotels (or basically anyone you gave your email to during your travel) than random apps selling your location to data brokers, data brokers being competent enough link those locations back to your email, but somehow too incompetent to know that being in France for a month doesn't mean you're interested in buying French car insurance. The latter isn't impossible, but occam's razor says we should favor the more straightforward explanation.
- bayindirh 2y agoThe kicker? The e-mail address I give to the hotels doesn't get that spam. My other, personal, e-mail address gets them. A specific one. And no, I don't get car insurance scam. I get generally faster ones, like "you have a package" types... The rabbit hole is a bit deeper to summarize with a #8, Solingen made Occam's razor.
- HexPhantom 2y agoAnd once trust is broken, it's almost impossible to restore.