[Gllug] data protection & spamming

[Benedikt Heinen]

> > Apart from, obviously, stopping to deal with those companies - is there
> > anything else I can / should do?
> The problem is *proving* that it was then who gave/leaked your email
> address to
> spammers, that will be difficult ... ie the spammers did not get it
> somewhere else.

That bit isn't the problem - the spam is going to two different addresses,
one of each I have exclusively used with the two companies. No other of my
email addresses (also for other financial info services) has been
compromised this way -- and both addresses have a slightly different naming
pattern - the chances that some spammer through sheer dumb luck guessed
those two, without any "false positives" showing up in my mailbox I think we
can pretty much rule out.

Also, one of the two companies in a response wrote "We are still working on
getting an update for clients looking for additional information." (note,
"clients" - plural), so I guess, at least one of the two is fully aware that
there is an issue at their end.  (The one giving this statement was the
broker)...

The question is rather, can I get any recourse on costs caused at my end
(when this started - I did do full systems checks to make sure that the
information wasn't leaked on my end - i.e. take the mail servers offline,
reboot from rescue disks and run full diagnostics on the systems to scan for
any hint of trojans/back doors, etc, as I felt I needed to be sure it wasn't
at my end before contacting the companies in question.)



Benedikt

   ALLIANCE, n.  In international politics, the union of two thieves who
     have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that
     they cannot separately plunder a third.
 			(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary)
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