To think that if I supply my email address in good faith it shouldn't be used to send me spam?

[Yonihadtoask]

I get my fair share of junk emails. Companies get my email address and I send such items to my junk mailbox. Fair enough.

Today I received another email from a person who I have had email correspondence with in relation to a business transaction who has sent me spam.

Today's was from a person who we hired a house in France from 2 years ago. Recently I received similar junk from a woman who was an Energy Performance Assessor, and also a contact from DS's Scout Group.

Is it feasible that someone has got hold of my email address and is using the name of the contact to send me junk? Or is it truly originating from the named person?

So annoying. And unprofessional.

Are they sending you emails that are relevant to what they do, or just random stuff?

If it's relevent then ask to be taken off their mailing list. If it's really weird stuff then contact them and say they might have been hacked/got a virus.

My sister suddenly started sending me links to porn sites. I was somewhat taken aback until I realised that something had got into her account

No, certainly not relevant at all. Links to dodgy diet pills is one -which I then had trouble closing down.

I had contacted one of them previously to tell them to stop sending me junk -it did cease for a while.

Luckily no links to porn sites

Then it's more likely than not that they've been hacked or got some sort of virus, tbh.

Either that or my sister really does want me to hook up with russian babes

Thanks.

I will email them - as I was surprised by 2 out of the 3 - as it is not professional to use their contacts to send them spam.

Russian Babes DH gets those kind of messages - he says it is from his time online dating before he met me...

That sounds like a virus. Check your own sent folder if you clicked on it you may have inadvertently sent it on to everyone on your contact list.

Anything similar just delete without opening. I get ones for diet pills and viagra neither of which interest me.

Nothing in my sent folder jacks. I checked thanks.

I am usually very cautious with emails - but when the sender is a name you have dealt with already, I guess it's different.

There's a thing you can do with gmail to see if companies are passing on your info. You need to do it when you sign up for things. Obviously you need a gmail account.

All you do is slightly change your email to include the name of the company you're signing up for. Write your email address as normal but add +companyname before @gmail.com

So if I'm signing up for mumsnet as chutes@gmail .com I would sign up as chutes+mumsnet@gmail .com

This works as Gmail ignores stuff after the + and before the @

If I get random emails to chutes+mumsnet I can see mumsnet have been naughty and passed on my info!

Disclaimer: I'm well aware mumsnet don't pass on emails to other companies without permission

The diet pills one is definitely a sign of being spam. I was hacked on Twitter with this one.

That's interesting Chutes. It naffs me off, when I get spam like this.

It's called address alias

I think I'm wrong about it only being gmail, and that it works for other email providers?

Ta Chutes.

Thaks chutes - that is useful.