Fresh email-address created for this site is already receiving phishing mails

[monkydudy]

Can someone explain to me how this is even possible?

I created a new email-address and paypal for the sole purpose of buying something from this site.
2 weeks later and I'm already getting PayPaI (yes that's an I) phishing mails to get my PayPal credentials.

 

[DaSoul]

Spam mails are sent out random generated. Even if you only register an email-address and never actually use it, you get spam.

 

[Grim32]

Following from what DaSoul said. This occurs when you create an email from popular email hosts like gmail, hotmail, live, etc. If you create your own domain & email this is a lot less likely to occur.

-Grim

 

[Aion]

I always create emails from some local not-so-popular platforms. Having dozens of mails for using on various of games. All of these receive zero spam.

But my several yahoo/hotmail/gmail addresses, even after most of them are used just on single occasion, are receiving tons of spam each day. Including both my oldest email addresss - in yahoo.com (both are with 4 letters and 18-19 years old) - they are not used for registering new stuff since 15+years, but still receive 30-50 spams each single day!

 

[CalifRHCP]

This is not fool proof by any means, but a neat little trick to help you track down which webistes "might" be giving up your information is to add a + after the email and before the @. You can put anything after that + as a description.

For example, lets say your email is

[email protected]

You can do [email protected]

Google mail recognizes this format and will auto-send it to the correct address "[email protected]".

When you start getting the phishing/spam e-mails, look at what address they're sending them to. SOME people will strip the + off before or after selling your e-mail info though, so it isn't fool proof.

 

[patco]

Following from what DaSoul said. This occurs when you create an email from popular email hosts like gmail, hotmail, live, etc. If you create your own domain & email this is a lot less likely to occur.

-Grim

Yes. I do agree with you! That's why it's best to create our own domain and create an email there. Most hosting companies offer it as an option