Quote:
Originally Posted by noclue
It always boggles my mind that people do things like this. I have no idea how they got into my email. FastMail ID'd it as spam, but I was curious about it so I looked at it to see if it was actually from FamtMail. It just didn't feel like something FastMail would send out. I've already sent it to the abuse address with a short note.
Have you ever received one of these emails? I don't know what I did wrong to invite them into my life...  |
There are many ways you can end up being targeted by such messages. It may be as trivial as you having a simple account name or alias that is targeted by a dictionary attack. For example,
jane@fastmail.com is likely to receive a lot of random spam. Another common issue is that a legitimate correspondent may end up (deliberately or accidentally) getting you on lists of valid email addresses targeted by such attackers.
It was probably not your fault. A good technique for the future that can help a lot is:
- when signing up for a new service or with a new company, use a unique email address (e.g. jane+Amazon@fastmail.com);
- when you receive spam or a phishing message, look to see what email address it was sent to; and
- use a Rule to ensure future messages to that address are either deeted or placed in a special folder.
If it seems a company you do business with has sold your email address, you might want to reconsider working with them in future.