For years I have been using the bit before the @ in my email address to generate unique email address for company signups to help monitor spam. So, for example, I might use [email protected] for Apple, [email protected] for Samsung and so on. In addition to this I would also always ensure that I ticked the box that said I didn’t want any contact from third parties.
The reason for this approach is that I could then monitor whether a company passed on my email address to a third party and I would know who had.
As I say I have been doing this for years and until recently I hadn’t found anyone that had abused my email address. But now I have found a large number of third party, spam, emails all to the same email address: [email protected]. O2 being one of the mobile telephone operators that I had an account with a few years ago when I gor my first iPhone.
So the question is what I do now? I could contact O2 directly but I don’t think that they will give a shit or maybe I should just go directly to the ICO and register a complaint with them.
Either way it is interesting that in all the years of taking this approach this is the first time I have found anyone that has abused my personal details so I guess that I should be grateful for that.