I’ve used this many times before. But this is so well known I wonder, why wouldn’t spammers/scammers just remove the “+” and trailing characters before “@“?
Comment on How are scammers getting my email address?
mojolobo@lemmy.jrvs.cc 2 weeks ago
If you have signed up on dubious websites with questionable privacy policy, many of them legally sell this data to “data brokers” who then sell it to anyone willing to pay. This happens more than you’d think, for example in 2019 it was reported California DMV makes $50 million a year selling users information. www.caranddriver.com/…/dmv-selling-driver-data/
One neat trick is to signup for services with an email like name+website@domain.com, that way if you ever get spam you’ll know where you have been compromised.
jaybone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
True. A more reliable way to achieve this is to buy a domain and use addresses in the form websitename@your.domain.
jaybone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah that also usually comes up in these types of discussions. Even for technical people, that approach can be a pain to manage.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I might need to use your trick in the future. Thank you!
T156@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Information might also be leaked through data breaches. An email is not a particularly hard thing to find, or even guess.
A spammer could easily just have a computer iterate through all possible combinations of emails and usernames, and shotgun it.
Especially for a name like OP’s. If their email is a similar name, it wouldn’t be difficult for generate one that is also two words.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nah, my email is my name. It’s a very uncommon name.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A program to send to [list of firstname.lastname pulled from the census]@gmail.com or whatever is pretty easy. Also merchants sell the email lists for $ so if you’ve bought anything with that email that could be it.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And you have zero social media with your name?
daggermoon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Correct. I ditched social media a few years ago. No regrets. I deleted every account I did have. Snapchat was the last hold out. I deleted it because I got a popup that required I give consent to be used for AI training or some shit so I deleted the account.