I've noticed something odd. When I lived in Virginia, I started
receiving email directly to my gmail box from my U.S. Representative.
Unsolicited spam from Congressmen is nothing new but it was a little
odd that they found my gmail box (which I don't give out) and not one
of the hundreds of aliases at herrin.us or dirtside.com which I do
give out. The gmail box exists only in mail headers; "From" is always
a different address.
I moved to Seattle. Today I found my grmail box subscribed to a
congressman's list from a nearby Washington jurisdiction. Not some
random congressman. And not any of the addresses I give out; my gmail
box's address which I don't.
Anyone else have a similar experience? Any idea how a hidden address
is making it on to relevant congressmens' lists but not any others?
That's weird right?
Yes. I get spammed about once a week from Jaime Herrera Beutler. Never looked at the headers though.
It’s entirely possible someone is either pranking me by signing me up to political lists or they harvested my well-known address from somewhere.
Here in Florida the self-preservation interests of the two party system have resulted in all voter registrations being made public, including email, d/o/b, phone, home address (since you can't legally register any other), party affiliation. If you used your private email for any state government registrations, they may have leaked it as soon as you moved. Alternatively, if your previous state had already leaked it, and you have declared a party affiliation, the state level entity likely shared it with the national entity, who then shared it with the new state entity where you moved so they can spam you all over again. I made the mistake of donating to a party backed candidate about a decade ago, and the cesspool of political entities associated with that party continue to email and text me every single cycle. Unless I start suing, or change all my contact info, there's no likely any way I'll ever get it to stop.
I believe several states' DMV's have been found to be selling license registration info as a revenue source too.
Florida does have a way to not have your personal info released; it's conveniently only available to people you'd expect, first responders, judges, and of course, members of congress.
In article <CAP-guGUfDirM1d+h0w_MRgx-Nu0o64EVSsAEnXkSK8SODY_=Dw@mail.gmail.com> you write:
I moved to Seattle. Today I found my grmail box subscribed to a
congressman's list from a nearby Washington jurisdiction. Not some
random congressman. And not any of the addresses I give out; my gmail
box's address which I don't. ...
It's strange but I think it's not typical. I have given tagged
addresses to lots of political candidates and am getting buckets
of mail, like five a day from each of the presidential campaigns
to those addresses.
I am getting no political spam to my gmail box, and do not recall any
that wasn't clearly due to nitwits signing me up who thought that my
address (which is my name) was their address.
on a probably unrelated note, the new yorker has an interesting piece this week about the
ultra invasive trump2020 app, provided by Phunware.
The writer claims in the last 'graph that they managed to track down an email address she
never provided to the app:
“...the messages I began getting from the Trump campaign every couple of hours were sent not only to the name and address I’d used to access the app. They were also sent to the e-mail address and name associated with the credit card I’d used to buy the phone and its SIM card, neither of which I had shared with the campaign. Despite my best efforts, they knew who I was and where to reach me."
Nothing. I used the gmail address for nothing. Ever. Not even when I
first got it many years ago. I provide an @herrin.us or @dirtside.com
address which my server later forwards to gmail for my perusal. I
usually use a custom address so I can figure out who broke my trust. I
have a couple of generic addresses (like bill@herrin.us) for mailing
lists and situations where I don't have a custom address ready. But I
simply don't give out the gmail address. I treat it as a back-end
mailbox for my own smtp server. 100% of email that reaches my gmail
box without going to another address at my mail server first is spam.
Hey google, siri, or Alexa phoning home and your information put into a local database as a new person in the area for which they have bought your address.... I could believe that.
I treat it as a back-end mailbox for my own smtp server. 100% of email that reaches my gmail
box without going to another address at my mail server first is spam.
I used a similar flow a few years ago that worked until I made the mistake of signing into some service using “Sign in with Google” and then it was all down-hill from there. Within a few months I found myself on customer lists that I hadn’t signed up for, and my spam folder grew as well. YMMV, but that was my culprit.