Okay you creeps, it's Raptis Rage Time.

[Raptisoft]

Okay Pals, which one of you is selling e-mail addresses? I have this special secure e-mail address, see, that I use only for purchases where I know it's trusted. Between 2001 and early November, 2004, I recieved not one single piece of spam. Not one.

In early November, I bought several indie games. SOMEONE in this elite little group is speading the love, because now my "secure" e-mail address is getting "Your love is waiting for you" and "Have you ever wanted to work at home" messages!

So why don't you own up and take your pummelling like a man?

[Reactor]

Hmmm... that has to be annoying.

[Vectrex]

a conspiracy, I love it!

[aduro]

is there such a thing as a secure email address?

[BigZaphod]

It is possible that some credit card/order processing service took the address and sold it in the middle of a purchase. Perhaps even without the knowledge of the developer you bought from. It would depend on how the system was setup, of course. This is pure speculation.

[svero]

I can think of a dozen ways an email could be compromised without someone going out of their way to actually sell it or provide it to spammers for whatever reason. Course just because it's a conspiracy that doensn't mean it didnt happen.

[Emmanuel]

Is your address semi-impossible to guess by a dictionary or alphanumeric search (ie, wx8t52355nnng00@myhost.com) ? I have an e-mail account that I've never used for signing up for anything, unfortunately the username is rather short and can be matched by alphanumeric searches pretty quick. Now I get all sorts of fun offers.

See the positive side though, spam is quite organized: If I took these offers, I could refinance my home or help a Nigerian widow get her money, with which cash I could buy cialis or viagra, and then use that to meet bored housewives in the UK. (my wife would disapprove, in which case the Nigerian money would help in the divorce settlement.)

[Teq]

Spam is the single most annoying thing on this earth I actually abandoned an e-mail address because I was getting so much spam, these days its 5-10 e-mails a day which takes me a few seconds to dispatch, but still its a waste of my time

[princec]

Time to implement whitelisting on your SMTP server.

Cas

__________________________________________________ __
Buy games with hamsters and balls and stuff! Just write to secretdontspammeaddress@raptisoft.com

[Raptisoft]

I think it's a conspiracy because I got 0 spam on that address for a LONG time (my other address, that I use for signing up in bulletin boards, newspaper subscriptions, etc, gets HAMMERED 24/7-- it started out as an experiment in "do you really give out my e-mail address even though your little disclaimer says you don't?").

Then suddenly I bought eight Indy games in a day (you know who you are) and very shortly afterwards, the spam began. Now I've been buying Indy games all across the years that I did not get any spam, so I doubt the "credit card sold it" approach.

I could--just barely--accept another explanation. But I prefer to think it was evil indies, because everyone loves a strawman.

But in all seriousness, if it wasn't the indie selling it, could some of these payment places do it? Primus, eSellerate, Trymedia, and a couple that I didn't recognize (will check my receipts). This was the first time I used Trymedia, that I know.

[mahlzeit]

Your experiment is flawed. It would have been easier to find out who is spamming you if you had used a unique email address for each transaction.

[Pyabo]

Why don't you do an experiment and find out? Get your money back on the games first ... then set up a new email address for each one. Repeat the process of buying the games... wait for the spam.

There are other places where a spammer could get your email address. I've always been under the assumption that there are corrupt ISPs out there... Look at what happened with AOL a few months ago -- an insider was busted for selling account names to spammers. I'm sure the same thing happens with other ISPs. Also, any SMTP mail relay that your email passes through is a potential email-harvester.

That being said... Trymedia raises the red flag for me. But that's pure speculation, not libel (or is it slander?)

[princec]

Even the sound of the word "Trymedia" rings alarm bells with me. Again, pure speculation, but they certainly picked a nastily commercial sounding name...

Cas

[Raptisoft]

Your experiment is flawed. It would have been easier to find out who is spamming you if you had used a unique email address for each transaction.

Oh that experiment was just to see if EVERYONE could be trusted. Just a sort of "don't necessarily believe these disclaimer things."

[the2bears]

Your experiment is flawed. It would have been easier to find out who is spamming you if you had used a unique email address for each transaction.

This is what I do, it takes seconds to set up a forward from a dummy account - not even a real account, just kill the forwarding when you receive some spam.

Bill

[FlySim]

How much are emails worth? Not that I want to sell any, but I cant imagine they are worth selling in the quantity that indies get. The damage from pissing off a customer would seem to be much greater...

-J.R.

[Mark Fassett]

It could be that the email was posted somewhere, by someone that's not too bright, and a spider grabbed it.

[Chaster]

Yawn... Sounds like someone's computer probably got infected with a harvester worm and their address book contents got sent to a spammer... Happens all the time..