Spam from this site

[MickeyF]

I would like to know why this site sells emails to spammers?
Since this is the only place this email has been used I have ben getting 20 to 30 spam messages a DAY.
Do you not respect other people? If thisdoes not stopI will do two things. One being I will report you under the No spam acts and then I will gather as many company emails and use them to sign up for every spam ad I get from your company.
I feel this is a fair exchange for having to get so much spam I did not ask for and most of it illegal as they do not have uninscribe links.
Shame your company is so broke it has to sell information.

[Nayuaka]

I've never gotten spam from this site, or anything Tulga related. Are you sure it's just not random spam?

[Imayo]

I have never gotten any spam from this site. You do know that spammers use bots to send out emails to everyone at a given ISP and even spoof the senders email to look like it came from that ISP.

[Varangaard]

Spoofing sender email address is one of the easiest things, as SMTP protocol has no validation whatsoever. However the OP is not claiming the spam originates from istaria.com domain.

Never disclosing your email is not a bulletproof protection against spammers. It is not very difficult to create a bot program that tries all the common and uncommon name combinations and sends mail to all of those. It doesn't cost a cent to send out hundreds of thousands of emails, and even if as much as 90% of the addresses end up being invalid, the 10% that does reach existing mailboxes justifies the effort to spammers. Because the originating email is spoofed, they'll avoid any possible 'undeliverable mail' reply floods.

Further, there are methods to make message boards to cough up valid emails even if you have hidden yours. Go check the 'forgot password' feature on the forum main page. It asks you to provide an address where to send a new password, and very helpully informs that the address is not in database if you enter a bogus one. Thus, it acts as address validation service for spammers. They generate thousands of adresses and run them by various boards' password request feature, saving those that successfully send out a new password. This is why I have stated my email on this forum as [email protected]'t.

edit: Oh yeah, and never unsubscribe from spam. When you reply to a spam message, you have just verified that your address indeed does exist. Ever heard that spammers trade email addresses by bulk with each other? Even if one truly does honor your unsubscribe request, you can expect mail from others who buy your email.

[MickeyF]

Since the email in question was only used here, To me it narrows it down to one place it could come from.

[imported_tjl]

Since the email in question was only used here, To me it narrows it down to one place it could come from.

read above.

spammers don't even need your email to spam you. It's been over two years, and I have yet to recieve a spam message from AE/Tulga. Just some in-house promotional stuff (which you can opt out of recieving)

[LaughingOtter]

Since this is the only place this email has been used I have ben getting 20 to 30 spam messages a DAY.

So, you created an email address for the sole purpose of posting on this specific forum two months ago, and have never used it for anything else since then?

Gee, You must have used a really desperate email provider. [^o)] You have no proof they didn't sell your address; after all, they have it, too....

I signed up on this forum the day it opened to the public. So did my wife. Like these other folks, we've had no spam issues either. If the site's address list had been sold, all of the active addresses would be getting hit. Funny thing is, spammers want ACTIVE addresses, so the folks that post a lot would be prime offerings. They'd be a lot more desirable to a spammer than someone who posted two whole times two months ago.

So either your claim is a bunch of BS and you're doing this to scare people away from joining the forum, or you're blaming the wrong party. Either way, you owe Tulga an apology.

[David Bowman]

Artifact Entertainment and Tulga Games have never sold, traded, or given away any customer information. We will not share information unless required by law or to better operate our service for you.

On a personal note, I am the CEO of Tulga Games. I have a deep respect for the privacy of my, and my customer's information. I want to create a great gaming experience for you, and everything that I do, every day that I work, it is toward that goal that I push. The team believes in that goal. Selling your information so that some other company could pester you is in direct opposition to that goal. I will notdo it, and have never done it.

Very Sincerely,

David Bowman
CEO & Creative Director
Tulga Games, LLC
[email protected]

[Cerjar]

Spammers also can try to scan your email-provider for valid email-adresses. This happened to me with a emailadresse at web.de. I used one of their services, which included a new email-account. I didnt even knew about that new account for almost 6 months, so i never used it anywhere. When i then heard from a friend that this service includes a email-account there had been about 40 emails: One Welcome Message from web.de and the rest had been SPAM...

[tyshadragon]

Is it a hotmail address by any chance?

I don't know if they have changed over the last few years or so but when I got one for using MSN messenger I ended up with a ton of spam even though I had never given the address out to anyone (didn't even sign onto messenger more than once with it!)

[Vandellia]

One thing you have to remember is that spammers uses a bot to create email addresses so if its a simple address somthing like bob_x or bobx the bot will "spam" all addresses starting with bob @ (anything).com the only way around it it is to randomly change both case and add numbers to an email account, I for one havean ISP e-mail accoune i have never used ever for any reason yet last check i do check it from time to time i had 1K plus of e-mails in it all said, dont forget anyplace you visit for any reason can strip an email address off your browser as well tracking cookies are neither bad nor good but, If you have outlook or out look express setup on your computer and loaded some sites can and will strip your ie for your e-mmail addy , I Have been in this game andon the boards and have never recieved an email from tulga other then tulga business.