Selling email addresses?

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about this.  I signed up for the newsletter/forums using a very site-specific email address - eyeonspain at my-domain

Suddenly I'm getting lots of emails from "Maria in Russia" or similar offering me cut-price Viagra, true love, or medication.

My guess is either someone has sold that email address, or had a viral infection that has passed on my details to others.  Either way I'm blocking this address and I'll miss out on this valuable resource.

Regards

Bob

Hi Bob

We certainly don't sell email addresses!

I think you are probably referring to the newsletter.  Our newsletter database host, the very respected company Aweber, did have a data compromise issue in December.  We use Aweber for our newsletter as they have anti-spam agreements with most ISPs and so they are very reliable and result in a very high delivery rate.  We have been using them for over four years without any problems.

You can read more about the problem they had here.

We've been tracking to see if our own test emails in the system were affected but they weren't.  In fact you are the second person to report a problem.

I am sorry for the inconvenience caused but I think Aweber have now sorted out the problem so it shouldn't happen again.

Justin