How your mail address can fall into the hands of spammers
The situation when an e-mail inbox is full of needless messages from unknown addressees is well known to everyone who uses e-mail. At the same time, we very often provide access to our email address ourselves. But in the arsenal of spammers there are also gray schemes for collecting information. To protect yourself from spam, let’s look at the most general situations when your mail can fall into the hands of those involved in bulk mailing. Finally, you will learn a method to get rid of spam once and for the infinity future.
Offline address collection
The first way to collect addresses is far from the internet. We often provide our own coordinates when meeting at conferences or during any other business activities. Our business cards and advertisements usually contain an e-mail address. Participation in surveys and questionnaires is also often accompanied by a request to leave your coordinates.
Any activity with a request for a subscription (flyers in parcels, QR codes, subscription on mobile gadgets) is also aimed at replenishing the databases. If you are a customer of a company and are happy with their product or service, the probability that you will not only leave your phone but also your email box increases dramatically.
YouTube, social media, and dating sites
In social networks, ask to leave your e-mail in posts, statuses, menus, and links.
When authorizing a store, service or project, there is also a request for electronic contact data. For example, Twitter always knows your data and when you sign up for a newsletter, the email address is sent automatically. Similar actions happen when you subscribe to YouTube channels. And the request of the authors to support their project introduces a confidential character, and you are much easier to part with personal information.
The public messengers Viber, Telegram, Slack are simply packed with bots that collect subscribers and their data. Information exchange on dating sites is much faster than in ordinary life because people are focused on communication and are as open as possible. Therefore, the request to duplicate the phone number with an additional communication channel does not call suspicion.
Collection of information in online stores and service sites
Any subscription to the newsletter carries the risk that your e-mail will become publicly available. Pop-ups and banners can also contain calls to action after which you are asked to agree to the distribution of very, very important information. A similar story happens every day in online stores: as soon as you agree to free shipping for a subscription, you are already very likely to fall into the hands of spammers.
It is necessary to understand that notifications about discounts, product availability, or the “Track price” option are aimed not only at increasing sales but also collecting personal information.
All feedback chats are usually set up to collect contacts. As soon as you leave your question or talk to the operator, you are immediately asked to leave your mailbox.
Other methods
There is no limit to the ingenuity of spammers. You can give your data when participating in a webinar, registering in a game, and even if you decide to “unsubscribe” from any intrusive service. Each of us leaves his own personal electronic loop and add themself to databases of employees, customers, or members of any community. The storage of such information, unfortunately, is not always accompanied by enough level of protection. Even in the news, there is often information that the databases of government services have been affected by hackers. Unfortunately, there is an easier way: databases are simply resold by office managers or other company employees. And you can think that you are safe as much as you want, but you will not know where you made a mistake and why your inbox is littered with spam.
The solution to the spam problem – temporary email
As you can see, there are more than enough options to lose personal information. And what, everyone now falls into paranoia and control every step? Not at all necessary. If the problem of spam is actual for you, you can use the temporary mail service and get free of intrusive information forever.
Temporary email https://one-off.email generates a new, unknown address when a client visit the site. With its help, you can send and receive mail, register accounts, and not waste your time sorting spam. The mail lifetime limit can be extended. Complete confidentiality is ensured by the fact that upon completion of the work, the user’s IP and all correspondence are automatically deleted. Registration of temporary mail https://one-off.email is not required.