Since I own my own domain (rockstomper.com), I have the option of assigning email addresses @rockstomper.

As a spam fighting feature, I use this to assign companies theirname@rockstomper, but assign that email address to myself rather than back to them. That way, they can contact me, but if they sell my address, say, for example, I get Viagra ads sent to fedex@rockstomper, I reassign fedex@rockstomper to fedex's customer service department instead. In this particular example, I should clarify--fedex has not sold my address, and so is not on my blacklist.

It's a little bitty revenge measure, but it makes me feel good.

This weekend, I started getting spam sent to cheapticket@rockstomper.com (entire email address listed, with .com, in hopes that the spam harvesters will find it and send them even more crap). Therefore, I can reasonably conclude that since I assigned cheapticket@rockstomper.com specifically to cheaptickets.com, so that I could track spam-email-address sales, cheaptickets.com, sold my email address to spammers.

I have reassigned (for the moment, anyway) cheapticket@rockstomper.com to webmaster@cheaptickets.com in the hopes that webmaster is a valid email address there; a quick check didn't net any known-valid email addresses right offhand, but if I find a known-good one there, I'll reassign it to that.

As for cheaptickets.com, and your now-obvious policy of selling my email to spammers... :flipoff:

<grin> Good for ya!</grin>

You can also add postmaster and root to your list of names that should be valid as well.

ChiXJeff

Rockstomper is hosted in a manner that doesn't allow me to run a mailer-daemon, so AFAIK, I can't CC a whole bunch of addresses off of one address. I can only do a one-for-one passthrough.

A search through their site yielded their privacy policy, which says they won't sell my address... and their "questions about our privacy policy? Email us at privacy@cheaptickets.com " line.

Almost every company that asks for my email address, gets a quick explanation of why my email address is their company name, along with the clarification that if they sell it, they get the spam... so far, cheaptickets is the first one to get tagged.

I'm thinking about sending it to privacy@cheaptickets.com instead.

For those interested, the spam I got was for degrees from non-accredited universities to up my earning potential. Sounds like a travel-related marketing partner for cheaptickets.com, eh? :mad:

And I did forward the actual spam to webmaster@cheaptickets.com, with headers intact, and a quick explanation at the top of why my address *was* cheaptickets@rockstomper, and why it's now theirs, along with a polite request that they stop selling their customers' email addresses.

Geez, no wonder people can't ever get ahold of you, you're always goofing around on the internet... :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

awsome :cool:


I'm gonna start doing that too.

Good for you. I kind of do the same thing, except I didn't think of forwarding it back to the source! Great idea!

Might I suggest one of these e-mails addresses?

cheaptickets.com Back-order this name


Registrant:
Cheap Tickets, Inc (CHEAPTICKETS9-DOM)
10 Sylvan Way
Parsippany, NJ 07054
US

Domain Name: CHEAPTICKETS.COM

Administrative Contact:
Cendant DNS Administrator (BRMKHSRWKO) dns.administrator@cendant.com
5350 S. Valentia Way
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
US
720-535-2222 fax: 720-535-2196
Technical Contact:
Trip & CTIX Technical Support (LRYVPCARMO) ctixdns@cendant.com
6560 Greenwood Plaza Blvd.
Englewood, CO 80111
US
303-708-7262

Record expires on 16-Jun-2005.
Record created on 17-Jun-1998.
Database last updated on 1-Nov-2003 10:51:13 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.TRIP.COM 63.81.69.141
NS2.TRIP.COM 63.81.69.142

Send it to abuse@cheaptickets.com or postmaster@cheaptickets.com they're required email addresses ;)

Originally posted by Nobody
Good for you. I kind of do the same thing, except I didn't think of forwarding it back to the source! Great idea!

Might I suggest one of these e-mails addresses?



Or you can call them...

I couldn't reach a webhost provider once, they didn't leave a phone number, they stopped returning email.

did a whois on their website and contacted the person registered to their domain name.

Poor guy got a call at 3am at HIS house, wondering who the fawk I was, how the hell I got his number, etc. etc. etc.. :laughing:

Scott, most excellent idea... must start implementing that one myself. :evil:

That's great for consumer spam. Wait until they get ahold of it for a mail relay.

Cendant DNS Administrator (BRMKHSRWKO) dns.administrator@cendant.com


Cendant?! I didn't realize they ran Cheap Tickets.

Based on my experiences working with Cendant, I wouldn't trust them to do any about this. Their SOP seems to be based on manipulation; probably buried someplace on Cheap Tickets website is a disclaimer that they won't sell your e-mail address, but their parent company reserves that right or something to that effect.

Isn't illegal to sell your email info to spammers if they state that they don't do that? :confused:

sometimes spammers guess email accounts too. I recently started getting spam sent to webmaster@ballinamuck.com, though I've never created nor used that address for anything, and it ends up in the catchall account.

gneiss.....

Interesting.... I used to do the same exact thing... I've got solidaxle.net.

I got tiring doing it for everyone I did business with... So I consolidated and exclusively use junkmail@ previously mentioned domain .net...

What's weird is... I get ZERO spam to this address. Tons of spam to my "real" address. I attribute this to my douchebag friends that don't know any better and open virus attachments that affect their address book :flipoff2:

Mostly, I find it interesting that I've been doing this for more than two years, and cheaptickets is the first one that's come up.

I'm aware of the email-address-guesser type stuff... but the probability of them guessing cheapticket@rockstomper.com is, IMHO, astronomical. They stand a better chance, statistically, at guessing my address at my parent ISP host; the only difference is, catchall for rockstomper.com goes to me; catchall for the parent ISP, I don't see.

I don't expect them to do anything about it, really. I'm just hoping that the additional load of one more email address leading to their webmaster, which is now on the spam lists, will eventually help become one of the "thousand cuts" in the proverbial Chinese death. If I do it, and encourage others who can, to do exactly the same, eventually, we can inflict that death of a thousand cuts on those who misuse our trust.

Originally posted by Daddy
sometimes spammers guess email accounts too. I recently started getting spam sent to webmaster@ballinamuck.com, though I've never created nor used that address for anything, and it ends up in the catchall account.

"Guessing" webmaster@ isn't really a stretch.

yea, I know it's probably the first email address you'd try, but I was just thinking about how it got added to a list. Sniffer programs will go through tons of random websites, looking through the source code for email addresses. usually I'll use javascript to output email addresses, to keep them from finding it. but my site is is full flash, there's no email address to sniff in it.

Was cheap tickets the one ran by the kid that got sued? there was one site where some under 18 kid made it, got a ton of hits, couldn't keep up with the orders but kept taking people's money. Maybe after someone else took over he took his list of tons of emails and sold them.