Shocker: Spammers Don't Protect Privacy Of Buyers

Email

from the as-if-they-care-to-protect-privacy dept

There are more stories every day about various companies not doing an adequate job protecting people’s privacy. However, at least those companies act like they wanted to keep the data private. At the other end of the extreme are spammers, who are gleefully selling all of the private info they have collected from those ignorant people who buy from spam. There are, of course, those who believe that anyone stupid enough to buy from a spammer deserves whatever else happens to them, but it’s unlikely those people realize that their data is getting passed around. While the old wisdom was that people who bought from spammers had just their email addresses put on “suckers lists” that got sold around, today’s spammers are giving up all sorts of info, including “home addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, Internet protocol (IP) addresses, and prescription histories.” One more reason (as if you needed any more) to avoid buying from spam. That last link also includes the idea that any time a spammer is successfully caught — anyone who bought from that spammer should be publicly humiliated. Might be one way to cut down on spam buyers — though, probably not a particularly legal one.