FlyerTalk Forums - Receiving spam on FlyerTalk-unique email address

FlyerTalk Forums (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/index.php)

- Technical Support and Feedback (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/technical-support-feedback-386/)

- - Receiving spam on FlyerTalk-unique email address (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/technical-support-feedback/1599496-receiving-spam-flyertalk-unique-email-address.html)

Receiving spam on FlyerTalk-unique email address

FYI

As of yesterday I started receiving spam on the unique email address which I provided only to flyertalk. Not sure if you sell the mailing list or it got hacked.

Two emails so far:
1. a "Sue Mockridge" spam with (presumably malicious) attachment.
2. Apparently advertising email from Nolo Business www.nolo.com

@Brewspar: I can confirm this. I came here looking to post the same thing.

Got 2 spams from Nolo in the last hour - one sent to my unique-and-only-used-on-FlyerTalk e-mail address, and the other sent to a totally-unique address I use on another site, MBWorld.ORG.

Seriously ticked off.

I can confirm also that an email address used *only* for this site has received spam from nolo.com.

I'm doubting we'll see an answer from Tech or Admin on the weekend, but I can assure you FlyerTalk is not selling your discrete e-mail address; I'd have similar problems t(imes ten, probably) and FT / IB has been pretty assiduously about privacy issues.

Nothing from Nolo in my FT related e-mail in basket I can find.

OTOH, there's a Nolo Business Breakdown | Take 40% Off e-mail spam in my spam basket from this afternoon from an address I use not remotely connected to FT, but a major provider it was probably e-mailed to.

We'll wait for a more official word next week - but I doubt it's connected to FT or IB. In the meantime, here's the FT Privacy Policy.

I've had the Nolo spam too, at my dedicated Flyertalk address. The fact that several of us have had it at our dedicated FT addresses leaves me in little doubt that FT, or someone within FT (rogue employee?), was the source.

Edited to add...:

I have just reported the Nolo spam through Spamcop. The reporting address for the web site came up as follows:

Re: http://www.nolo.com/ (Administrator of network hosting website referenced in spam)
To: hcab***@internetbrands.com

(Email address disguised to protect the guilty)

So - there we are!!!

I'm sure the wording was different in the past, but this is what it says now:

Quote:

We do not sell, rent or provide your personal information to third parties that are unaffiliated with Internet Brands.

So - they've given themselves the right to pass our details to affiliated companies.

Not happy!

(Shame they're not in the UK... this would be illegal here)

Quote:

Originally Posted by angatol (Post 23298087)

So I've now received the nolo spam, however, not to my FT email address. I've received it at an email address I used to sign up to vbulletin.org itself I think. I have 3 emails to this address in my inbox:

Sep 2008: "A vulnerability has been found with your password at vBulletin.org Forum. Some passwords are vulnerable to exploitation which may allow a third party to hijack your account."
I probably just ignored that.

Nov 2013: "We take your security and privacy very seriously. Very recently, our security team discovered sophisticated attacks on our network, involving the illegal access of forum user information, possibly including your password. Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We have taken the precaution of resetting your account password."

Did internetbrands buy vbulletin or something?

Today: "Nolo Business Formation Round-up" spam

Internet Brands, Inc. owns FlyerTalk, vBulletin and quite a bit more - and in turn has agreed to be owned by KKR.

Here's an interesting nexus (remembering some of us got the Nolo Business piece at e-mail addresses not at all related to FT or IB):

Quote:

Internet Brands establishes a joint venture with LexisNexis Legal & Professional, bringing together Internet Brands’ Nolo legal division and LexisNexis’ Martindale-Hubbell and Lawyers.com business.

Aggressive e-mail blasting. I'll look forward to further information from Admin.

I got the Nolo spam to my unique FT address. My other half got it as well - she isn't an FT member, but she does use Craftster, another IB product.

nolo.com is owned by IB:

Code:

Domain Name: NOLO.COM

Registry Domain ID: 834913_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN

Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com

Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com

Update Date: 2011-05-28 13:16:02

Creation Date: 1994-03-24 00:00:00

Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2017-03-24 23:00:00

[snip]

Registry Registrant ID:

Registrant Name: Internet Brands  Inc.

Registrant Organization: Internet Brands Inc.

Pretty disappointing.

Count me in as well - I have unique email addresses for FT and another IB owned forum and received the Nolo email on both IDs. Count me underwhelmed.

So what's the complaint here? This appears to be in line with their privacy policy.

The complaint is that spam is still spam...

The complaint is also that they changed the goalpost. I did not sign up to their privacy policy (they weren't running the show when I signed up back in 2002). They have, retrospectively and without my permission, given themselves the right to spam me about services unrelated to FT.

As I said in an earlier post, if they were in the UK (or indeed anywhere else in the EU) they would have been in breach of privacy laws and one could have had them prosecuted. I believe US laws aren't as strict as ours... they really ought to be!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDiver (Post 23298708)

Internet Brands, Inc. owns FlyerTalk, vBulletin and quite a bit more - and in turn has agreed to be owned by KKR.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/kevinb...13/04/hell.jpg