CREEPY Invasion Of My Privacy... High-Tech Scammers and Schemers

[arwalden]

So I went to this site after seeing an ad on TV telling me that I can "be my own boss" and "start my own business" and "make thousands a month from home" by simply "using my computer". Yeah right... I knew FULL WELL that it was a ruse for something else, or to get me to BUY the information that was going to make me a millionaire overnight.

But... just for giggles, I wanted to see what would happen and what the big scheme was THIS TIME.

So I enter the site and fill in their forms. I used a FAKE NAME ("Bucky Anderson") but I used my real address. I wanted to see how many pieced of junk mail actually arrived for "Bucky".

I gave them a disposable email address (created at spamex.com) so that I could monitor exactly how many times the email address was sold and re-sold.

I gave them a FAKE telephone number. For obvious reasons. It was even OBVIOUSLY FAKE... 123-4567 (or something like that).

HERE'S THE CREEPY PART... Someone, somewhere is using a reverse telephone directory to look up telephone numbers based on street addresses, and that night I received about 4 calls asking for "Bucky". The next day I received one more. (The calls have stopped now, but I imagine there will be more, eventually.)

It's my own fault really. I was playing with fire.

-- Allen

P.S. The first email message that the disposable address received was one that requested that I click a link to confirm my desire to be on their mailing list. --- Well that's nice. At least they CONFIRM to make sure the email address is valid and that the owner requested to be on their list.

But... I DID NOT CLICK THE LINK! I did NOT confirm and give them permission... yet somehow I still started receiving unsolicited email messages using that address. Isn't that sweet?

I've disabled the disposable email address.

[chookie]

1. Question

Were there HTML graphics in the message? If so, their server may have been able to ping your IP address and link it to "Bucky."

Just because you were curious to explore this ad does not mean that you "deserve" having your privacy invaded, etc. Think about giving a call to FTC and report this nasty piece of business -- there may be an element of illegality in what they did to you -- so report them. There's too much weird shit going on regarding identities, etc to be casual about something like this. Maybe it's just a con, or maybe it's downright criminal with links to who knows what.

http://www.ftc.gov/spam/

[arwalden]

2. Nope... No images in the email

but I know exactly what you're talking about. That's why I turn off automatic display of images in my emails.

I'm fairly confident that someone did a reverse lookup... because I'm able to do it myself on my own address. It's not that difficult. But still creepy that someone would do it when it's CLEAR that I didn't want to be contacted by telephone.

FREAKS!

-- Allen