New e-mail 'alias' and Spam

[mike2002]

My 'proper' e-mail address is an alpha-numerical automatically created by my ISP. The user then has the option of creating aliases. I am lucky in that my main address suffers very little from spam.

Two weeks ago I created another alias, then tested it by sending myself a couple of messages; one from my main address, the second one from Yahoo. Since then, I have received four spam mails from people I have never received mail from in the past. As I have not yet notified anyone of this new alias, I am baffled as to how these people obtained it. :confused:

[PrntRhd]

My guess would be from the Yahoo account.

[mike2002]

I have additionally sent messages to my main address to myself from Yahoo (for test purposes) over the years, and have not received any spam (that I know of) from them.
If it IS Yahoo, this would mean that any messages anyone sends through Yahoo are monitored in some way, and the addresses 'harvested'.

It would be a simple thing to test; I could create another alias then do nothing for a period of time, then send a mail to myself from Yahoo then wait and see what happens.

The snag with this is that there is a small limit upon how many aliases I can create with my ISP. If I choose my initials, then delete that alias, I think it won't accept it again, saying that the alias has already been chosen.

[Rick]

Anyone who thinks that any / all of these free e-mail sites doesn’t harvest address’s is living in a dream world..

They all do it..

Example.
My Wife has 1 email address ( a sub account to my main account)
She does not surf the web
She only uses her computer ( make note Her Computer ) and email account on that machine and that machine only

I setup and mailed her from a Hotmail account while away from home.
In the past weeks after using that account she has been getting spam.
Adult spam no less.
The type intended for Men ONLY
You know the crap. Enlarge the &^%%$#$# by 3 inches


I should also note that I used that same (hotmail) account to email my daughter on her yahoo account

Also Many but not all this crap has an origination address from yahoo

[mike2002]

Thanks Rick.

It makes you wonder doesn't it!! :(

[mike2002]

Futher to me earlier posting; yes I did in fact create a 'test' alias a few days ago called 'testing'. Up to this morning I hadn't sent any mails with it, so I presumed nothing was going to happen.

But, surprise surprise, I've just received two messages, spam of course.
For the moment - that rules out Yahoo. So - my ISP is to blame!!

To top it all, this is a line from my ISPs SPAM info:--

"Currently our anti-spam filters are configured to only delete the most obvious of spam e-mails."

I rest my case.

[Paul Komski]

Just bear in mind that spammers send out zillions of mails to addresses that are (a) guessed and (b) pulled from dictionaries etc, etc, without having harvested them from anywhere. It is not surprising therefore that the generic alphanumeric main address is relatively spam free.