Data Privacy

superscaper

If there is a company that I know has passed my email address on to spammers is there a specific organisation I can report it too?

nickmack

The Information Commissioner may be able to help, though it's unlikely as you might have a hard time *proving* that they sold your email address. Unfortunately, this happens thousands of times every day and the IC simply can't investigate every case.

http://www.dataprotection.gov.uk/Home/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/spam_and_junk_mail.aspx

superscaper

Well it's not exactly proof but the scam email I got last night was sent to a specific address that I used only once to register with a company I ordered off two years ago and I've never even typed it since. My email address is of the form "companyregisteringwith@mydomain.co.uk" so unlikely for a single scammer sending a single email to have guessed a genuine address straight off, and the company in question is a smallish company that I'm sure most people haven't heard of.

nickmack

EMail addresses can be harvested in all sorts of ways, so unless you are very confident then it's often not worth your time pursuing.

http://www.junk-mail.org.uk/articles/spam.html

If you feel so inclined, you might want to contact the company concerned and let them know unless you get answers, you will report them to the Data Commissioner for a possible breach.

Personally though I wouldn't bother as unfortunately I don't think anything would come of it.

superscaper

I just find it annoying as the email address is literally only with the company and in my email archive from two years ago so I don't see how it is even possible to get the address other than from the company. Getting random spam to speculative addresses at my domain is one thing but getting hold of specific email addresses from companies is quite another. I've already contacted the company in question, RGMedia. And I've sent an enquiry to the data commissioner. I am extremely confident that the address wasn't guessed either as the only guessed addresses I get are things like sales@ webmaster@ etc and it would be next to impossible that the very first time they guessed a very unusual address it happened to be to one I have actually used. As for harvesting the address it would have to be directly from my computer (in which case I've got much more to worry about than spam but I'm quite proficient at protecting my computer) or from the company, the address was never used anywhere else unless the company published it somewhere.