I am not fully sure yet, but it looks like ClassicFM needs to be added to my personal list of “Bad Organisations” which sell on your email address to spam houses.

I have mentioned this in the past, but basically when I sign up for various things online I use a Gishpuppy email address. Ok, it is an ugly website but the service is really useful. With Gishpuppy you can create an email account tailored for a specific use which re-directs your email to any account you want.

To this end, when I registered for a special offer at ClassicFM.com a while ago I used the email address classicfm.zqa at gishpuppy.com. This is the only place I have ever used the email address and the only time I used it.

While I was on holiday (and all day today), I have had in the region of 8 – 10 spam mails sent to that email address. Not a massive amount, but annoying – especially when I have only used the email in a single place. For completeness, the header information reads: (I have removed my real email address and munged the gishpuppy one)

Return-Path: <Pace2Calderon@comptia.com>
X-Original-To: [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]
X-Envelope-To: [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]
Delivered-To: [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]
Received: from minuteman.ai.net (minuteman.ai.net [205.134.188.6])
by robin.systems.pipex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EEA4E0000EB
for [REAL EMAIL REMOVED]; Sat, 7 Jul 2007 18:34:00 +0100 (BST)
Received: by minuteman.ai.net (Postfix, from userid 1002)
id E73849A3; Sat, 7 Jul 2007 13:30:11 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from 1D597C28 (84.127.79.26.dyn.user.ono.com [84.127.79.26])
by minuteman.ai.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 60F0A9A3
for <classicfm.zqa @ gishpuppy.com>; Sat, 7 Jul 2007 13:30:10 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by event.comptime.net (Chostfix, from userid 322)
id 22DCE52121; Sat, 07 Jul 2007 12:33:17 -0800
X-Original-To: rat-07@guide.comptime.net
Delivered-To: industry-07@advertisement.comptime.net
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2007 12:33:17 -0800
From: “Clarke, Consuelo” <Pace2Calderon@comptia.com>
To: classicfm.zqa @ gishpuppy.com
Subject: Recruiting [GishPuppy]
Sender: Pace2Calderon@comptia.com
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: Pace2Calderon@comptia.com
Message-Id: <20070707173010.60F0A9A3@minuteman.ai.net>
X-Antivirus: AVG for E-mail 7.5.476 [269.10.2/890]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain

All of them were pretty much the same as this (with different return addresses and paths) and I am sure people who know much more about the subject than I do can make more sense of it.

It is possible that Gishpuppy is the weak link and sold my email address on (or had it stolen) but as I have dozens upon dozens of Gishpuppy addresses, I am not sure how likely that is.

At the moment, I can only assume that ClassicFM have either deliberately allowed my address to be used or are just inept at securing my details.

Shame on them.

[tags]Bad Shops, Spam, Classic FM,Gishpuppy[/tags]