Selling emails

[cvcalhoun]

@AlanA 170015 wrote:

I’m just curious as to whether or not you sell off your email list (or allow it to be hacked). Every year at about the same time I register for Freezing Saddles I get a lot of junk email that only shows up once a year.

We definitely don’t sell e-mails. And I seriously doubt we’ve been hacked. We keep the registration site out of Google, so hackers are less likely to find it. And we’ve got a plugin that alerts me to hacking attempts, and it has never been triggered. However, if you really want to check, you could set up a separate e-mail for Freezing Saddles and see whether it gets spam.

The end of year is a particularly popular time for people to send e-mails, for a whoie variety of reasons from people thinking that others will be more generous around the holiday season to various tax things. But I seriously doubt that participation in Freezing Saddles has anything to do with it.

[Steve O]

@AlanA 170015 wrote:

I’m just curious as to whether or not you sell off your email list (or allow it to be hacked).

@cvcalhoun 170020 wrote:

We definitely don’t sell e-mails.

What do you mean by “you” and “your?” Freezing Saddles is a grass roots game, organized and run by the players themselves. You, Alan, are part of the “you.”

@AlanA 170015 wrote:

I’m just curious as to whether or not we sell off our email list…

ftfy

[musclys]

@AlanA 170015 wrote:

Every year at about the same time I register for Freezing Saddles I get a lot of junk email that only shows up once a year.

I think that’s called Christmas.

[cvcalhoun]

A few notes on this:

1. If spammers get your e-mail, they don’t stop sending you e-mails at the end of a competition. (I once went ten years without access to a particular e-mail account, and when I got it back, all the same spammers had been continuing to send e-mails for the whole ten years.) So if the e-mails come only this time of year, they are related to the season, not to Freezing Saddles.
2. A total of six people have access to the Freezing Saddles submissions. All six of them are volunteers who spend a lot of hours administering various aspects of Freezing Saddles. I seriously doubt any of them are making pocket change by selling e-mails, knowing it would undermine the contest they spend so much time working on.
3. The submissions are password protected. They are further protected by the fact that the site has a feature that prevents it from being indexed in Google, meaning hackers typically can’t find it to try to break the password. They are further protected by a script that locks someone out for twenty minutes if they try four times to access the site with an incorrect password, and locks them out for 24 hours if they try 16 times. We have had only three instances in which someone has tried four times, and none in which they have tried 16.

So if you’re being spammed this time of year, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that it’s not Freezing Saddles.

[rcannon100]

Spam volume as a percentage of total traffic https://www.statista.com/statistics/420391/spam-email-traffic-share/

Spam constitutes 60% of email traffic (I actually thought that it was far higher).

The key is, assuming this is a credible source, look at the trend…. Spam spikes relatively EVERY December.

You might consider a better email service. There are email services that are very effective at killing spam.

[trailrunner]

Looks like the OP has been registered on the site for one year, so it would be hard to attribute an increase in spam to participating in FS or this forum.

[Judd]

I will sell Alan’s e-mail address to anyone for $5. I am also willing to barter for beer.

[cvcalhoun]

@Judd 170067 wrote:

I will sell Alan’s e-mail address to anyone for $5. I am also willing to barter for beer.

Now taking away Judd’s access to a) the submissions area, and b) the good drugs.

[sszibler]

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spamity spam wonderful spam!

[Judd]

@cvcalhoun 170069 wrote:

Now taking away Judd’s access to a) the submissions area, and b) the good drugs.

I won’t need any more drugs with all the beer I’m going to get from Alan’s e-mail address.

I would so have to read a bunch of old emails that I probably didn’t save to figure out how to access anything again.

[cvcalhoun]

@sszibler 170071 wrote:

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spamity spam wonderful spam!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

[cvcalhoun]

@Judd 170072 wrote:

I would so have to read a bunch of old emails that I probably didn’t save to figure out how to access anything again.

AlanA, there is your answer. The only person willing to sell your e-mail address will be deterred by being so technologically incompetent that he can’t figure out how to use a “forgot password” link.

[Judd]

For $10 or two beers, I will safeguard Alan’s email address this year.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AlanA]

@Judd 170067 wrote:

I will sell Alan’s e-mail address to anyone for $5. I am also willing to barter for beer.

As long as you give me half your beer, I’m ok with that!

And I guess you’re all right about the end of the year nonsense. I guess it’s just a coincidence that I just happen to register at the end of the year. Those emails are never seen again.

[Author]

Posts