josh wrote:you all are saying that these addresses weren't public? That is, you provided them to different senders with understanding that they'd be kept confidential by those senders (as opposed to using them for a newsgroup post or something)?
That's correct. So far I've been getting spam through 4 addresses:
- 1 was amazon.com
- 1 was to order concert tickets from ticketweb.com (similar to ticketmaster)
- 1 was a band mailing list (they're a pretty obscure band, it's a small mailing list)
- 1 was for a contest between the NFL and monster.com
I never used any of these addresses for anything else, and would never make them public. Until very recently, I had never gotten spam through any of them; suddenly, I'm receiving multiple (similar) spam e-mails per day through all 4. If you need more details about the exact addresses, emails, etc, please send me a private message (I would prefer to not give too many more details on a public forum).
If (theoretically) a spammer had somehow obtained the master list of spamgourmet addresses, then why would I be getting spam through just these 4, instead of through all of my spamgourmet addresses? But, I don't know how else a spammer could have collected these particular 4 addresses... there's no other common link between them. I'm extremely confused.