One of advantages to having your own domain *and* running your own mail server is that you can create as many email addresses as you want on your domain. So some time ago, tired of the spam thing, I started tracking "who does what" with my email addresses, by assigning each contact with a new company a unique email address.

There are few surprises. Shortly after linking my Safeway grocery card with my United Airlines Mileage Plus account, my United Airlines address started receiving emails from Safeway. I posted my address on my high school's alumni website and immediately began receiving emails telling me I had just inherited $2 million dollars. Harvesting bot. Things like this make sense.

Other things are surprising. Like receiving male enhancement spam at an address reserved for transactions with legit companies. Today's example is LetsTalk.com - a popular cellular phone service reseller. While their service when I placed my order with them was excellent, the fact that my LetsTalk specific email is now receiving massive amounts of spam doesn't reflect well on the company and raises concerns about their security practices. I've fired off a letter to the company and we'll see what we get back.

Other sites that I have, in the past, tracked to email address leaks are such popular sites like classmates.com (though I haven't received email to that address in a few years now) and one of my *former* banks. That latter event was quite interesting, especially since I proved to their security officer that the breach was coming from a compromised PC *inside* their corporate network. They lost my business not so much because one of their PCs became infected, but because their security officer was so cavalier in handling the manner (oh, your email is not private information, I can find it anywhere on the web).

The bottom line - as has often been pointed out, your information is not as secure as it seems.

Tags: Technology