How Did Spammers Get My Email Address???

[ktaylor310]

I decided to sign up for two forums in the past couple of weeks so I could socialize and network w/other small business owners, particularly web designers. This forum has been great, but yesterday I joined a forum called "designersTalk". I signed up for both forums using an email address that I don't use often to protect against spam. I used to have an "info" address for my business that I set up years ago and finally had to change it about 6 months ago due to the huge amount of spam I was receiving. It was such a pain to inform all my clients & friends and make the change over, but I have been gloriously free of spam since then.

This morning I received an invitation to join a web design forum - "estetica-design-forum.com" at my private email address! I think it had to come from the designersTalk forum because the invitation contained several email addresses - all of which were web design companies. No one has this email address but my clients, and the timing can't be a coincidence. I don't even use this email address for whois. Concerned because my email address was in the "to" field - now available to everyone who receives the email.

Any ideas?

[Logan]

Hi Kim, based on your communication am I correct that you believe the spam issue is from the other forum. If you have any concerns that we have an issue, please let me know as that is something we are not aware of and want to be on top of.

As a test, I would setup a completely unique email address. Then use that email just for one forum that you are questioning. Basically make a one to one relationship between an email address and the forum, then test test test.

[WhereAreMyBiz]

it is actually quite bad if it happens on other forums, do you leave your email address "viewable" by others?

[ktaylor310]

The email address may have been viewable (I don't think so) but I did not use my private email to register on either forum. I used a Yahoo email address to sign up on the forums. I only use this email address when I am afraid I could be spammed and check in infrequently.

Logan, I do believe the spam came from the other forum as it focused just on web design. I've had a great experience here and I can tell you try hard to keep the forum clean.

After re-thinking everything, I decided to check my website. I think including my website address in my signature brought some visitors. I have a "quote" form on the site and of course if you view the source you can see my email address. That was pretty dumb. I've since updated the form & formmail script to change and mangle the address. This will help in the future & I can only hope the spammer doesn't pass my email address around.

[ktaylor310]

Well... believe it or not I tracked the spammer down. A very Nice person Here's the link to her profile, but I'm not going to hyperlink it as she doesn't need any free plublicity. Hopefully if I just leave it alone she'll go away.

estetica-design-forum.com/members/kelly-creative.html

[Logan]

Thanks for keeping us posted with that Kim!