[Gloucs] Spam to unique email address

[A. S. Budden]

2008/9/17 Paul Broadhead <lug at twinmoons.clara.co.uk>:
> Slightly off topic for Linux but I know we have some experts
> around....
>
> Whenever I subscribe to an on-line service I use a unique
> email address prefix before my normal @domain, like the one I use
> here.  Now if this email is exposed on the internet, I get spam, lots
> of spam. For example, if used on a public mailing list. However, when
> the service does not publish my email address, I expect only proper
> service email and no spam.  This is almost always the case. Very
> occasionally, I do get spam sent to such email addresses.  One such
> case happened last week so I contacted the service support and asked if
> they could explain.  I have had a very reasonable exchange with the
> these support folks who appear to be taking the situation very
> seriously.  They assure me they have not lost or given my address to
> anyone else and that their servers are not compromised. Assuming
> things are OK my end too, the question is.  How can this be explained?
>
> One explanation is that spammers are just guessing valid email
> addresses. Any thoughts?

I use sneakemail.com for a similar reason (it has the advantage that
you can create/delete the email addresses very easily) and I had this
situation very recently and again, the company to which I'd given the
unique address took it very seriously.  It turned out that their
servers had been attacked and someone had come in and taken all the
email addresses of their customers without them knowing.

Al