Anyone else getting unexplained spam to their addresses?

[warto]

In the past couple of weeks I've gotten spam sent to these addresses on two different spamgourmet accounts:

sunrocket.t.user@xoxy.net
mypaypal.t.user@xoxy.net
crest.e.otheruser@xoxy.net

Those are all valid addresses that I have created in the past. The odd thing is that I'm suddently getting spam sent to those addresses. I created the crest one back in 2004 and have not received any emails to it since then.

How are spammers getting these addresses? They can't be coming up with them randomly since I'm only getting mail sent to valid addresses.

Also, they can't be getting them from my address book since the sunrocket address had only been sent to my gmail address, the crest one was only sent to yahoo. I couldn't even find any references to the crest one in my yahoo mail account.

So is anyone else suddently getting spam sent to addresses that previously were clean?

[LowKey]

Dude, the whole point of SpamGourmet is that you don't care who gets the address. You don't want messages at those addresses? Go to the advanced tab and set their remaining mails to zero. Or just wait for it to run out on its own. You used SpamGourmet because you had to give your email address to someone you didn't trust with it. Turns out, you were right. Yay you.

(By the way, if you were using that second address with PayPal, everyone you ever sent money to or received money from saw it. That's how my Hotmail address originally got contaminated. Now I've got eBay and PayPal using addresses that only accept mail from trusted senders. "sendmessagethruebay.oritwontgothrough.username@spameater.org" No mistaking that for anything other than what it is. )

[warto]

I understand how spamgourmet works. I have hundreds of addresses that I've created. I usually get zero spam coming into my inbox.

I'm not surprised when freecameragiveaway.5.user@xoxy.net starts getting spam. That's to be expected.

The thing that has me confused is why I'm getting spam on these addresses now.

mypaypal - created in 2002. Used for paypal. First spam received this week.
crest - created in 2004. Only used one time. First spam received this week.
sunrocket - created in 2006. Used only for sunrocket.com signup. First spam received last week.

So here we have a variety of addresses which have suddenly been compromised, some of which were clean for years. I'm just wondering if this is happening to anyone else.

That is, is anyone else suddenly getting spam to several addresses which have been clean for a very long time?

[SysKoll]

Nope, I am not getting unexplained spam and I have many, many addresses.

The only explanation I could find is that somehow, a machine that contains either messages or just plain text files mentioning these disposbables got infected by a spambot (which collects addresses and sends them to a server for further inclusion is spamlists).

What OS are you running?

BTW, once, I started getting spam on my ebay dispoable address. It was because the recipient of a message forwarded through ebay was infected by a spambot. I zeroed the disposable, gave ebay a new one, and everything was fine.

[warto]

All my spamgourmet mail goes to either yahoo or gmail. I use a variety of OSs when I check my email. The email is not downloaded on the computer other than in the browser cache.

Maybe it was just a coincidence that those three started getting spam at the same time. I haven't had my other addresses targetted. I also haven't had spam sent to my protected address. I'm hoping it's just bad luck those all got hit at the same time.

[josh]

Yeah, no one can say that they're unhackable, but we do take precautions. It's also hard to believe that someone would get our database and then send messages to the disposable addresses (rather than the "real" addresses) - we keep several "trigger" accounts that we watch which are never supposed to receive email, and they never have (via a disposable address or otherwise).

[tcgraham]

Here is my experience with sg addresses which have either "Kidnapped" or "escaped".

applebees 10462 SPAM since March 2004 337/month
rg 3466 SPAM since November 2005 288/month
purse 3364 SPAM since Feb 2006 420/month
woot.com 2185 SPAM since August 2006 1092/month

These addresses were only used once, in most cases to register on a website. These addresses were closed as soon as as the spam started.