Does SQLServerCentral sell your email addresses?

  • Hmm, does SQLServerCentral sell your email address?

    I've started a new contract and registered for SQLServerCentral.com, so I had a brand new "clean" email address. I had not registered anywhere else.

    The day after registration, I started getting spam and it hasn't stopped since. I hadn't any spam before that day.

    This leads me to believe that SQLServerCentral has sold on my email address and it's very annoying.

  • Gas Andy (2/9/2012)


    Hmm, does SQLServerCentral sell your email address?

    I've started a new contract and registered for SQLServerCentral.com, so I had a brand new "clean" email address. I had not registered anywhere else.

    The day after registration, I started getting spam and it hasn't stopped since. I hadn't any spam before that day.

    This leads me to believe that SQLServerCentral has sold on my email address and it's very annoying.

    I would be very very surprised if they do.

    I almost never get spam in my emailbox used for SQLServerCentral.

    Need an answer? No, you need a question
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  • Gas Andy (2/9/2012)


    Hmm, does SQLServerCentral sell your email address?

    NO!! I didn't get any spam mails ever!


    Sujeet Singh

  • They do not sell email addresses. Steve has made that very clear a number of times

    Something that has happened before is that people click on an article in the newsletter or front page, don't notice that the site they are taken to is not SSC (the newsletter and front page contain SSC articles and interesting articles from other sites, check the Source that each one lists), register again (thinking that SSC has lost their login details) and now there's another site that has their email address. TechTarget has done that a few times and spammed people relentlessly.

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  • To my knowledge we don't do that.

    Who is the spam from?

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  • Feel free to private message me the author of the message. As far as I know, we do not sell any addresses. I'd like to say "I don't", but I'm not in complete control of the list since this site is owned by Red Gate.

    I have never had anyone confirm a spam mail from another vendor from registration here. We haven't ever sold or shared our list with anyone. The times that we have sent out sponsored emails, we always do the sending; we never share the actual addresses.

    I would suspect that you either put the address elsewhere and forgot, or that your new company re-used an address or otherwise shared it.

  • They way I have email setup I could tell if they were selling the addresses, definitively. In the years I have been on this site I can't remember a single spam message.

    I would probably go out on a limb and simply say no they don't.

    With that said if you are using a signature that contains your email address in a recognizeable format it could have easily been poached that way..

    CEWII

  • I've got an e-mail address that's associated with an SSC account I haven't used for a while (long story and boring, don't ask). It's never received any spam.

    Another possibility that hasn't been mentioned yet is malware on your end of the connection. A keylogger or a variety of other malware operations could easily steal an e-mail address, even without you using it anywhere else. Have you checked that?

    A way to verify this, create a free e-mail account (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, whatever), use that to create an SSC account from a clean computer, see what happens.

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