You should at least have had an auto-reply.

I've not checked customer services e-mail queue, but I'm fairly confident its not 2 weeks! I'd guess that if you've forwarded a spam e-mail to customer services though there's a good chance it's been spam filtered. You're probably better off e-mailing [email protected] instead.

Is your "<personal domain>" one of the Zen subdomains (e.g. <yours>.myzen.co.uk) or is it a domain which you have registered?

Hi

I've had exactly the same thing from some big companies, including an airline.

In all cases the email address given to them was unique, never used elsewhere.

Nobody though gives a monkeys!

One leak was from a well now computer bits online retailer. I received a phising Email, the usual thing, from a UK bank, and they also had my first name! My first name could not have been guessed from the email address. A complaint to the company and their data protection officer went unanswered.

Another company covered their tracks, after getting them to take the complaint seriously, they told me it couldn't have come from their systems as there was no record of the email address in question in any of their databases, despite the fact I had signed in after receiving the SPAM to check what personal details they had about me, which used the email address. On trying again my account didn't exist!

There have been plenty other leaks.

I've complained several times to the Information Commissioners Office, explaining how I know the email addresses must have been leaked from said company, and months later you get a standard response about it being a virus's on your computer doing it and that I had no evidence that it was a fault of the company, so no investigation takes place. So gave up trying to complain.

I've had email addresses that haven't received emails for 4 years or more from companies that have long ago shut up trading suddenly start receiving SPAM, so I can only assume in those cases the data has been found on second hand servers!

Regards

Phil

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Oct-10 16:15:29)

I'm not saying for one moment that the address has not been leaked but it is important to run antivirus/antimalware on your system too as unfortunately the malware authors are becoming more cunning and the software is becoming more difficult to detect.

Hi

In reply to a post by techguy:

I'm not saying for one moment that the address has not been leaked but it is important to run antivirus/antimalware on your system too as unfortunately the malware authors are becoming more cunning and the software is becoming more difficult to detect.

Well I know it isn't a virus on my machine in my case leaking email addresses. All virus scans/malware are clean and leaked email addresses have been happening over many years with different companies and I've had different computers over that time. Also my main email address I've been using for years for friends and family has never received a SPAM email (I run my own SMTP server and have my own domain for emails). In one case an email address that received SPAM after several years of being dormant didn't even appear on my current computer!

Unfortunately this is the common response of all companies I've complained to, including the ICO, that it can't possibly be a leak from the 'accused' company and must be a problem my end.

Data is being leaked at an alarming rate, and when I major airline leaks your Email address it is a very big concern their data isn't secure, for obvious reasons. Like I say, no one was concerned or took me seriously, so I've long since given up complaining, and the ICO was a complete waste of time.

Regards

Phil

No spam was forwarded/attached, so it's a bit of a mystery; it was just a description of the issue.

I'll resend. The address I used was customerservices@zen. I've used support@zen in the past, so I'll try that.

It's a domain I've registed elsewhere. It's got a bunch of unique addresses on it, one for each business I deal with. Zen's is the only one that's getting any spam.

I'm as sure as I can be that there's no compromise at this end. Especially as I have a whole bunch of addresses that have had plenty of legitimate email to them in the past, one for each company. Zen's is the only one that's getting any spam, I'm not seeing anything of the sort for my amazon address, my facebook address, etc.