umart - either crooked or incompetent

[miriam_e]

Don't buy from umart.com.au. They appear to sell their customers' confidential details to spammers.

I use a trick to see if sites that require my email address are misusing that info. My website allows me an infinite number of email addresses and I make sure I use a separate one for suspect companies. If I later receive spam to one of those addresses I know that company has either crookedly sold their customers' details, or has been incompetent in protecting their data. Either way it is a betrayal of their customers' trust.

Comments

[greylock]

How unique are your addresses?
Do you check your logs for attempts to send e-mails to non-existent addresses?

I have addresses that have never been public that have been spammed, so it happens, but I am curious about the mechanics.

[miriam_e]

They are completely unique. The one I used for umart was their name at my domain (miriam-english.org). It can't get more specific than that.

I never emailed them. I entered the address into a form on their site as my contact address, so the only way to get that address is through access to umart's customer list.

[greylock]

That would seem to be a smoking cannon.

[miriam_e]

I've emailed them about it to give them a chance to explain. I figure they should get the chance. They haven't replied yet. If they do I'll post their response here.