4 ms·
Who's to say these guys aren't stealing our emails?
by wfunction 13y ago
Who's to say these guys aren't stealing our emails?
- aaronblohowiak 13y agoyour email is not a secret.
- AznHisoka 13y agowell, if you decide to list it under your HN bio, then obviously, it's not :)
- lexalizer 13y agoBut it's not public information either, unless you choose to make it public.
- mhurron 13y agoNo, but it can be harvested for directed attacks or spamming. Entering it would basically 'prove' it's a valid address.
- manmal 13y agoThe Adobe leaks list is mostly made up of verified emails, so... Coming to think of it, there has been some spam lately (though that hasn't happened in years now at gmail), and I wonder whether it's related to that Adobe leak.
- mhurron 13y agoAh, but by checking if your email is compromised, they get even more emails then they did just from compromised sources.
- dredmorbius 13y agoOn a risk / reward basis the benefit to checking here is actually pretty high. I don't find any of several accounts I use on there, but did find a friend's email listed (and just notified him). I'd actually appreciate a way to query my mailing list in an automated fashion.
- eternalban 13y agoDid your friend have an input on the the risk/reward decision?
- hernan604 13y agoBut its a real email
- wfunction 13y agoIt's the same reason why you don't reply to spam; it confirms your email is valid. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376031,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376031,00.asp
- maxerickson 13y agoThe geolocation part of that advice is a little paranoid for webmail users.
- eli 13y agoThat's been the conventional wisdom for decades, but I don't actually think it's true. I wonder if anyone has done any tests. The reply address for spam is almost certainly bogus. And I don't think it makes sense to target people who unsubscribe for more spam. They ain't likely to buy anything.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- prof_hobart 13y agoSecret, probably not. But in most cases I'm reasonably confident that each email address I use is currently only known by me, the one site I registered it with and the NSA. I have a couple of email addresses that thanks to that address either having been sold, hacked or given away by including in the to/cc field of a mass mailing are now out in the public domain, and I get spam (and almost certainly malware attempts) on those two on a pretty regular basis. I'd prefer to not have the rest of my email addresses end up in the same situation.
- AznHisoka 13y agoHave you been pawned? Yes, now that you just gave us your email address to sell to Russian hackers.
- chc 13y agoYou can't steal somebody's email just by knowing their address.
- awj 13y agoIf you wanted to collect likely-valid email addresses to sell to spammers, this would be a good way to go about it. I doubt they are, but can understand the suspicion.
- smtddr 13y agohttp://ismycreditcardstolen.com/ http://ismycreditcardstolen.com/ ;)
- MrQuincle 13y agoThey don't need to steal if you publish your email address yourself wfunction... http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.d.general/86923 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.d.general/86923
- wfunction 13y agoI don't appreciate you stalking me and posting that here (just because it's accessible somewhere on the internet doesn't mean I want to make it more public), but as a matter of fact I wasn't talking about that email address in the first place.
- sixothree 13y agoDid you mean to ask 'are they harvesting our emails?'.