SPAMMIT! How did they find me?! Lead gen, sneakernet, Epsilon and more.

April 14 2011, 11:45am

Here at OtherInbox HQ we have been watching the media response to the Epsilon data breach and it reminds us of a primer we wrote a while back about the many ways SPAM can find its way to you. (Dunno bout you but the first time I saw a Viagra email in my inbox, I thought an ex was playing a cruel joke on me…) We see about 5 ways that spammers get their spammy clutches on our email addys. 1- We are mislead. We give our email address to a website and they send us email we did not expect. -This happens a lot and it is often our own fault. By not reading the fine print, we can find ourselves signing up for a slew of other senders along with the things we actually do want to receive. Watch for pre-checked boxes and reverse opt ins too. If the tactic works, marketers will use em. 2- We are betrayed. We give our email address to a website and they sell it to other websites. -Lead generation, co-registration, data append.. whatever the term and whatever the method, the selling and buying of personal information is a very lucrative industry! When we are told about it up front, it can be quite helpful if the shared sites are getting us to info we need or want but it does not always happen that way! Not sure about the site you are about to share your info with? Try OIB.ME,  a FREE user curated resource we set up so you can review and share info about web marketers email practices. We see it all at OIB.ME …. so before you sign up for an online newsletter or notification, check out what other folks have to say about that sender!

3- We are the spoils of war. We give our email address to a website and it gets hacked. As we said above, the market for personal information is very hot! So sometimes people take the info against our will. This is what happened to Epsilon. This can be tracked if the hacked organization is upfront about it and does a good job of notifying affected consumers. Unfortunately, the data can also be “sneakernetted” by an employee with little to no way of knowing how it got breached. Once in a previous job, I was blatantly asked if I would be willing to “personally sell” a portion of SXSW’s music mailing list. Ummm, no. 4-We are unlucky.  Someone’s computer gets a virus and we are in their address book. This is one of the worst and is pretty difficult to track down! A lot of viral mechanisms are set to do exactly the following; Virus enters your computer. Virus finds address book. Virus sends out a tremendous number of spam messages from your computer which is now a host machine. You can try to remove the virus but your computer is now part of a network of spam bots. You can unplug it but the spam bots might then try to use your own body for energy….Yep kinda like “The Matrix.” 5- We are innocent bystanders. We post our email address on a website somewhere and spammers “harvested” it off the web. Harvesting email addys off of the internet is quite a chore! (I’ve done it with a simple Apple Automator script) It is impossible to track down since it is really a low res operation but there is a solution. Don’t put your email addy online. If you do, at least make sure it is not your primary email address. Try this-  Google your email address. Wowzers huh? Fix it with a catch all or a pseudo email addy! Done. So sure, spam is an ongoing problem… but we are not completely powerless even when there are breaches. So why all the hubbub? Likely because we are already on the edge of our seats… waiting for some sort of data apocalypse. And for some, maybe it has already come! If you live in Texas (like we do) you should know the state records have been compromised! That. Is. Scary. But it brings about a great question- Who is our info safe with if a state agency cannot keep it under control? Let us know about your experience with spammy email! Did you get any funky emails after Epsilon? Or even better, add a review on OIB.ME so others can know we took one for the team, together! Twitter – Facebook- Email – *Ping us!