Should I worry about my email address being sold?
MyBroadBand published an interesting article about South African email addresses being sold on a chinese-based website. The article goes as follows:
Millions of South African email addresses are for sale to spammers on a Chinese-based website. The www.3sent.info website, which claims to take pride in “staying on the leading edge of innovative marketing” is selling the more than 9 million South African email addresses for just $100.
A sample of more than 2000 of the South African email addresses includes high profile organisations such as The Star newspaper, the CSIR and a number of government addresses. This author’s email addresses is just one of the sample addresses on the list.
Despite claiming that their services include “the highest quality opt-in list on the market,” the number of “webmaster” and “contactus” addresses in the sample suggest that the addresses have been harvested from websites and compiled into countries.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of all of this, but it’s something most of us have been aware of for a very long time. Spam blockers and such are great and all, but they’ll never prevent every spam email from getting through.
The site claims that it has 9.3 million South African email addresses, which you can purchase for just $100.00 (+-R790.00).
I hope that something is done about this, because spam is on the rise, and it’s soon going to be unmanageable!
Christopher is the founder of iMod - Most of his time is spent building websites and pushing the limits with Search Engine Optimization. You can follow him on Twitter @ChristopherM
Chris M has written: 4117 posts.
Jun 10th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Rather than being worried I’d go buy this database asap before it’s taken down. It’s a pretty good deal!
Worrisome though…
Jun 10th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I wonder if they have my name on their list?
Hope so, because I could always do with some more spam.
Jun 11th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Would it not be a great idea to SPAM those people on the sample lists in order to “alert” them to the fact that they are on the list?
Then they can email this idiot and get him to remove their email addresses off of his list ????
Maybe somebody can actually provide a full version of the SA list?
Jun 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
@Andrew G: That is rather naive of you, if I may be so bold as to point it out.
The guy selling the list is not going to take a single name off because they simply DO NOT CARE.
Jun 11th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
@Richard Catto: Well, he took my email address off… so he must care!
;-)
Jun 11th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I think it’s super dodgy that these places are selling our email addresses and for only $100, lol, that’s dodgy! But ye, I guess I should quickly purchase a list now and get a mail off while they’re still fresh ;)
Jun 11th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Oh crap, one of my email addresses is on there …. jeesh, and I already get THOUSANDS of spam mails a day!
Some are from local companies and when I’ve called a few of them to find out where they got my email address (or cellphone number – get lots of sms spam too), they all say they’ve either purchased databases from some private seller or got access to my information from some “national consumer database.”
Pees me off that my privacy can be invaded like that …
Jun 12th, 2008 at 12:41 am
It’s terribly annoying, my spam has increased in a huge way over the past few months. What’s getting awful at the moment, is the number of recruitment agencies which are sending me job placements, at first it’s flattering, but now it’s just plain annoying!
Ye, and the scary thing is that there’s little or no way to avoid it :/
Jun 12th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Huh? Is your gmail programmed to show you the spam and put your real mail into the spam box?
Jun 12th, 2008 at 11:13 am
No no, it just chucked into the spam folder, but some get through and even though it’s in the spam folder, it’s still there are the number 23423432432 next to spam gets somewhat annoying ;)
Jun 16th, 2008 at 1:36 am
This is insane! Can we not do anything to stop this kind of thing? The last thing i want now is chinese spam!
The bottom of the page has an even better deal: “Buy all 136 nations – US$380″
Jun 16th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Ye mate, it’s damn annoying and the thing is, there’s very little to prevent it! Drives me mad.. I find that Gmail is pretty good at blocking spam, what email application do you use?
Jun 16th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Im using gmail and thunderbird – it does handle the spam very well. In four years i think ive had about a handful of mails seep into the spam folder and 99.99% of the spam is correctly labeled. However, there is one exception:
This reminds me, sometime last year, i had one of my domains with a catch-all address redirecting to my main inbox (something i had forgotten about since the domain was dormant) – and on one fine random day i just started getting hit by spam, not just by a little bit but somewhere around 500 mails every minute! The damn thing was too fast and i couldnt stop it! A lot of the mail was coming through to my inbox as well.
Fortunately, I was online at the time and managed to disable the catch-all. I had about 100 spam emails in my inbox and over 5000 or so in the spam folder in the space of 10 minutes!
Jun 16th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Sheesh, that’s crazy! I’ve had a time before where someone accessed one of my servers and setup a spam mailer, which upon sending millions of emails, would send back bounced emails, which appeared in my inbox.. needless to say, I had an hour or so of emails flying into my inbox, what a nightmare it was!
Jul 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Did anyone manage to buy the list?
Jul 16th, 2008 at 11:50 am
@Lester: Yup, and for $75 it’s yours.
(kidding – sorry, I could not resist)
Jul 16th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Cool, what’s my special one time only bonus offer if I buy now?
I don’t hear any “that’s not all” or “order right now.”
Maybe glomail should start selling lists,lol
Jul 16th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
@Lester: an X-rated response came to mind. Heheheh.
Jul 16th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Haha, there’s NO selling of email addresses on this website!
Aug 24th, 2008 at 11:40 am
look at this website and can some-one please tell me where i can purchase south african email addresses,i need millions as to make this website work.and please alot of people talk about spam but do they actually know what yhe word spam stands for?easy
SUPER PROFESSIONAL ADVERTISING METHOD -S.P.A.M
JACO
Aug 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
jaco – spamming is illegal!
Mar 18th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Jaco Dercksen that posted above is a pest. I have been spammed by him for the past couple of weeks now so he obviously found a source for email addresses.
Jun 29th, 2009 at 2:54 am
Our Jaco spammed me repeatedly until I had his ISP (Hetzner) shut him down – he moved to another ISP of course and now sends spam from there. LOSER