Selling Membership list

[D_Hailsham]

I have just received a marketing email from a company, allegedly based in China, which says "We get your information from www.diynot.com..

Are you selling your membership list to other companies? If not, how have they obtained my details?

 

[Bahco]

Probably hackers that are good at what they do.

Pro hackers sell email addresses on to companies.

 

[D_Hailsham]

Probably hackers that are good at what they do.

Pro hackers sell email addresses on to companies.

Possibly, but I have never come across a spam sender who says where they obtained your address from.

Maybe Chinese companies, if that's who they are, think they will lose face if they don't tell you. Could start a trend

 

[JohnD]

have you ever shown your email address in a post? (do a search)

I don't think they're even visible in Profiles any more.

 

[D_Hailsham]

have you ever shown your email address in a post? (do a search)

Did as you suggested and found that I had given a URL to some pictures I had posted to Yahoo, who insist on using your email address as part of the URL. I stopped using Yahoo photos and went to Tinypic instead. Now I use DIYnot's own facility.

The intriguing thing is that, not content to obtain just my email address, the hacker knows which forum I use and the email is relevant to the subject.

Have any other members had this problem?

 

[JohnD]

can you use "edit" to remove it?

 

[DIYnot]

Sorry to hear of your spam problems. We most definitely DO NOT sell membership lists, nor will we ever. The only time your email would be listed on your profile is if you specifically enable it. Since the launch of the Network, the publicly viewable email address on your profile is a completely different field so your registration address is only used for DIYnot emails. If you have placed your email address in a post, you can edit it, or if you 'alert moderator' we can edit it for you.

 

[DIYnot]

I meant to say D_Hailsham, if you haven't already deleted that email could your forward it to me please - [email protected].

Many thanks

 

[D_Hailsham]

I meant to say D_Hailsham, if you haven't already deleted that email could your forward it to me please - [email protected].)

Thank you for your replies but sorry, you are too late! I have already deleted the email - without replying or clicking on the "click here to unsubscribe".

I am pleased to hear that you do not sell mailing lists. The hacker must have obtained it from my post. I have edited it out, so it can't happen again.

The hacker must have taken a complete dump of all the forums as the email was relevant to the forum I use the most. I realize that, with a forum which is open to the non-members to search, your security options are limited. But, without trying to tell you how to do your job , would the system used by some insurance comparison sites work? Where, sometime in the transaction, the system generates a random sequence of characters, usually displayed as a graphic with "arty" layout, and the user has to type this in to continue. This could be presented to "Joe Public" before they got the results of a search; but logged on members would not need to do this.

Just a thought

 

[RF Lighting]

Surely if members did as forum rule 4 suggests, this would be easier that making the search super complicated? And besides, the hacker could just search the site with google.

 

[breezer]

Surely if members did as forum rule 4 suggests, this would be easier that making the search super complicated?

yes but most people ignore the rules

 

[D_Hailsham]

Surely if members did as forum rule 4 suggests, this would be easier that making the search super complicated? And besides, the hacker could just search the site with google.

There would be no difference for logged on members and the casual user would just have to enter a string of digits to read the search results.

Hackers, who tend to use automated systems to obtain info, would be prevented from making searches.

 

[JohnD]

... but most people ignore the rules

tough **** for those "most" people then.

 

[Gunslinger]

there are automated bots out there, programmed specifically to trawl forums and blogs for any and all email address, and auto scripts to strip addresses out of URL's it is a big problem, even malicious cookies can do it through advertising banners, it is fairly easy to stop within a private board where no posts are visible until you have logged in, but for this kind of site/community, that i would think is not an ideal solution, so, as site admins have taken the time to do what they can to protect your email address, it is down to each individual user to take responsibility and be careful what he posts.

perhaps people should use the personal message option rather than emails ? does anyone know if the site sends emails on receipt of a new personal message ?

 

[breezer]

does anyone know if the site sends emails on receipt of a new personal message ?

it does if you check the selected box