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Ask Slashdot: How To Convince a Company Their Subscriber List Is Compromised?
jetkins writes "As the owner of my own mail domain, I have the luxury of being able to create unique email addresses to use when registering with web sites and providers. So when I started to receive virus-infected emails recently, at an address that I created exclusively for use with a well-known provider of tools for the Systems Administration community (and which I have never used anywhere else), I knew immediately that either their systems or their subscriber list had been compromised. I passed my concerns on to a couple of their employees whom I know socially, and they informed me that they had passed it up the food chain. I have never received any sort of official response, nor seen any public notification or acceptance of this situation. When I received another virus-infected email at that same address this week, I posted a polite note on their Facebook page. Again, nothing. If it was a company in any other field, I might expect this degree of nonchalance, but given the fact that this company is staffed by — and primarily services — geeks, I'm a little taken aback by their apparent reticence. So, since the polite, behind-the-scenes approach appears to have no effect, I now throw it out to the group consciousness: Am I being paranoid, or are these folks being unreasonable in refusing to accept or even acknowledge that a problem might exist? What would you recommend as my next course of action?"
Maybe they did fix the issue, but its difficult to take away the compromised list once someone else has it. Or were you expecting them to track down the virus senders and delete the lists from those servers?
I'm in a similar situation: I create a unique email address for each company I deal with, and each website I register on.
The only solution I've found to be the most effective is sending these companies threatening letters. Quote them sections from their own privacy policy; usually there will be a clause about circumstances under which they will share your subscriber information. Tell them they've breached their own privacy policy, and whatever federal privacy legislation your country has in place. While you're at it, file a complaint with your country's Privacy Commissioner, or whatever the equivalent is.
Perhaps we need some sort of "name and shame" website for companies whose subscriber lists have been either breached or sold (e.g. Dell)
What would you recommend as my next course of action?
Nothing. Seriously. You tried, they didn't listen. Typical. Now find something more deserving of your attention to spend your time on. :)
- How unusual is the username portion on the email address? There have been a lot of spammers over the years that blast random emails to commonname@yourdomain.com. Mike, John, Bob, etc. are more likely to receive spam than sdvjsdvkj@domain.com
- Is the email address in question visible to other people? e.g. registered forum members for the software in question? Sometimes people sign up for a forum just to be able to harvest the otherwise hidden addresses of other forum members
It's practically impossible to get anyone to acknowledge something like that. From their perspective they just think you are yet another ass who thinks they know more about the internet than they really do.
I don't even bother any more. I get spam/malware it goes into the block list and I don't do business with the company anymore. If you really care about it, make it public. If you have a blog make an entry about it and hope it shows up in google. Or post the info here, if it gets modded up google will probably index it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I just wonder what kind of System Administration list has a facebook page. The mind boggles.
Even if they know the list is "compromised", what are they supposed to do about it? It's already out there. Do you expect them to go after the spammers? Because that's essentially impossible. If they're not in the United States, it really *is* impossible.
That's why you haven't got a response. They know, but there's nothing they can do.
And frankly, if you had decent spam filters on your own personal domain, you probably wouldn't be seeing these emails anyway. I doubt anyone with a Gmail or Yahoo or Outlook.com address sees this stuff.
My suggestions? Quit worrying about it, and quit running your own mail server. You may think you know what you are doing, but you almost certainly don't.
Or they knowingly sold your address.
This does not directly address the question, but it is topical.
I do the same thing with my domain and it was always a hassle to make sure I filled in the correct From: address on each email I sent. Then I found the Virtual Identity Plugin for thunderbird.
It automagically remembers what From: address to use with what To: address. It also makes the From: line fully editable on the fly and remembers what you used for the next time. It makes it dead simple to make sure that you never accidentally leak one of your unique addresses to the wrong person/company.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.