Recently on my blog a commentator asked me if I sell their email. They also said since they started putting in their email into forms to get free stuff around the internet they started getting a TON of spam.
This is a great question and I am really glad it was brought up.
First of all… No I do not sell or share your information with anyone and never will. But lets be honest… how would you possibly know if I did? (I will answer that in a bit)
Second of all DUH. People are giving you free stuff and collecting your email BECAUSE they are going to email you and try to sell you something…. eventually…. But first they want to build a “relationship” with you and show you how smart they are by giving away stuff.
Now with 99% of the junk out there I would say:
- The free stuff is not worth giving up your email
- They probably do sell your email
In the last year I have endorsed 2 products. Andy Jenkins Video Boss and right now Frank Kerns List Control. Like me they have been building their brand and relationship with their readers for years and… like me… they are not about to ruin that by doing something stupid so I trust them and am telling you that you can trust them also (but again how do you really know?).
These guys are my friends and also the stuff they have given away is unreal. And unlike others there stuff is a very limited time AND its sells out very fast.
Sidenote: If you have not downloaded Kern’s latest giveaway you need to. The software and techniques he uses is amazing. Frank told me he paid over $10,000 to have it developed and after I downloaded it I can see why.
But back to the question at hand.
How do I know if someone is selling my email address?
Answer: You create a new email address for each thing you opt into.
Sounds complicated right? Well its not. Most email systems will let you use the + symbol as a seperator and you can append whatever after that to track that email.
For instance lets say your email was james@gmail.com and you wanted to go grab this free software from Kern and see what all the hubub was about.
Just use the email of james+listcontrol@gmail.com for your email.
Gmail, and most other email providers, will ignore the + symbol and anything that comes after it and you still get the email. Try it out… its pretty cool.
I use this trick to:
1) Know of people are selling my email
2) If they are I can easily filter it out based on the address and send it straight to the trash.
So now you know FOR SURE if someone IS selling your email.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
Great stuff!
Great stuff. This is absolutely necessary to know that who the f is spamming the shit out of us.
Dude I already trusted you
‘Smart’ email sellers could easily cut off the part after the + sign like Gmail does, so you still would not know who sold you out.
I didn’t know about this trick!! I ‘ll try it and let you know about the experience:-)
Thanks for sharing!
Or just make one email address for all the “free” stuff and subscriptions, seaparate from personal or work email; then when it gets out of control just delete it and open a new one.
Never knew about the + trick. Awesome!
Thanks,
I did not know gmail had that feature because I use yahoo. But yahoo has the option to create temporary accounts (they sarted some years ago), you receive the messages in the main account, and you can delete those temporary accounts anytime, I have been using it and I realize when someone gave my address to others.
Now THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Probably not even Jeremy is aware of, but at the end of 2009, aweber which is an autoresponding service had a problem in their databases, their information was stolen by some people who got illegal access from over seas, this is what themselves said in their website. I had created before an email account to receive certain info, after sometime I was receiving spam in that address, I made a little research and found that article …
Thanks for reminding me of this trick – I had forgotten all about it! The spam is always pouring in, good to have the potential to track the addresses.
Even better is to use dots. If you use the + sign, landing pages can correct entered email addresses and use addresses without a dot instead. However Gmail also supports the dot, for example username@gmail.com is the same as user.n.a.m.e@gmail.com. This way it is harder to correct email adresses.
Sil makes a good point. As a programmer thats what I would do! But good tip, none the less .. thanks Shoe!
Great information to know.
I certainly get my share of crappie emails. How about this one: YOUR FRIEND so and so thought you might like this website, or some B.S. like that: My friend? I don’t even know the SOB.
Guess that is part of shuffling through to find the real opportunities.
I’ll began using your tip.
Thanks,
Willie
Hi Jeremy,
Interesting email trick but I agree with Sil that seasoned email cheats would already know about it and bypass it.
As for people probably selling your email I think they’d be stupid to do it. Preparing their own doom that way.
I don’t think it happens as frequently as you seem to suggest.
About the free gifts being 99% junk, I think that depends. One person’s junk can be another person’s treasure.
I don’t buy into the view that it’s all crooks out there with the notable exception of you/me and your/my two or three friends.
The majority of people trying to make it online have enough foresight to do so honestly.
Vance
Awesome trick! Thanks for sharing man!
Most of them sell e-mails through ad swaps …. Sad but reality
Actually, I set my account to be a “Catch all” and when I registered for your newsletters I used the address Shoemoney@”webaddressgoeshere”.com a couple of weeks ago I did receive a spam to that address which was NOT from you.
And honestly, it stood out because I was certain that you didn’t share emails. (I don’t remember what it was, I just know that it wasn’t from you)
If it happens again, I’ll let you know-
Thanks Cindy-
Such an awesome tip about how to track what’s going on with the emails one subscribes with for various promos – much appreciated!
Great tip that I didn’t know about – thanks a lot
It definitely seems like a good trick. First time I’m hearing about it, so I’ll have to try it out sometime.
Wow, this is the real first time I heard of this…will be very useful for me.
Btw, Jeremy, if I may ask, how do you discover this kind of tricks…?
I receive lots of spam everyday as I would imagine that anyone working online will do, it is one of those occupational hazards, whether this is beacause someone has sold my email address or not, really does not make a whole deal of difference.
I mean who actually uses their main email address to subscribe to a marketers list anyway. It is probably because of the more unscrupulous marketers that so many people are wary of subscribing to email lists.
It is so easy to set up email addresses, I agree with you on setting up a new one for subscribing to every list, but if you don’t want to do this, then just set one up for your list suscriptions and then when you trust a marketer forward them to one of your more used email addresses and just ditch the marketers that do not impress you and just annoy you with their constant email offers.
Anyway that is my little 2 cents worth, great post, you certainly get people to voice their opinions, which is something I have not mastered yet.
Keep it up
Thanks
Joey
Unfortunately, aweber was hacked and the hackers got direct access to the email addresses. This resulted in people who used the above trick (name+word@email) thinking I was spamming or selling their info.
http://www.aweber.com/blog/uncategorized/data-compromise.htm
Now you can set up thousands of Twitter account using one Gmail address
Nice trick. From now on I will try it out. Thanks Jeremy
I never had any idea about the + trick. Thanks for sharing the tip… this gives another weapon to track stuff with.
Keeping the faith is very important. I think you do not sell our email.
cool trick, will try it…thanks
I always use unique email addresses for all sites, and I have used unique email addresses to sign up for Shoemoney X and a different address for Shoemoney Newsletter, and I get spam to BOTH of those unique addresses that only Shoemoney has received. However, I don’t think that Shoe has sold my address. Most likely, shoe’s newsletter system (aweber in the past, other companies now) have been hacked, also Shoemoney X signup form could have easily been hacked to access signup database, also one of shoe’s many employees could have easily gotten a trojan which managed to get past antivirus software, plenty of other explanations for why I get spam at my unique email addresses which ONLY shoemoney has received. The final sentence of Shoe’s post above is “So now you know FOR SURE if someone IS selling your email” and obviously that isn’t true, unless Shoe is trying to convince me that he IS selling my email
Hi, Another simple way that I use is to use the abbreviated website address in the ‘Your Name’ box, eg:
Paul (SMSc)
This then tells you which site has replied or passed on your eMail address., paul
nice trick with +. Didn’t know! Will use it for, for sure.
I participate in many blogs and sites of architecture and therefore get much publicity from the sale of residential and commercial buildings. People can not fool spamming like that.
That’s a really slick trick re: multiple addresses. Testing it out now!
Great tip Shoe, thanks! Also good to know aweber got hacked. Strange thing is the ONLY email lists I’ve recently signed up for have been Shoe’s System and Kern’s per Shoe’s recommendation… and now I’m getting spammed too. It must be the aweber hack.
I think this is very good trick, I should try it.
I use an old hotmail address for junk, but that is a slick trick. Thanks.
I tried it with a hotmail address and got a postmaster failure message. So as far as I can tell johnsmithxyz-listcontrol@hotmail.com will not work. Gmail works like a charm. Cool trick.
Christian, use a plus (+) symbol rather than a minus (-), it should work wherever you try it.
With GMail you can also add a decimal place (or full stop/period) anywhere before the @ to differentiate as if it was two seperate accounts,
Hey, i tried using the + with gmail but it kept telling me that the email was invalid. How excatly do i make the email address. Do i create a new Gmail account with the new address, or are their some settings in my current Gmail account that i need to change. Or is that i don’t change anything in Gmail and just append the extra word to my email WHEN i’m signing up for something. Tried it recently and i got a message saying please use a valid email to sign up. I’m a bit confused?!
Dang, that is a really good piece of advice. I’m gonna starting using it asap, thanks a ton
Great tips you really do not know if someone is selling your email. But thank god for double optin forms you can unsubscribe any time you want its the law. There is a lot of great info out there and i say if you can get something for free that can teach you something go for it.
If its not worth your time or they are not teaching you anything of value just unsubscribe from their list.
Absolutely loved the idea but when I went to try it out I had some tough luck on some non gmail accounts. I also realized how easy it is for anyone buying or selling email lists to simply bypass this safe guard. Good trick in theory but not too feasible. You can read about it on my blog, http://www.mikechiasson.com/2010/03/17/buy-your-email-lists-no-worries-thanks-to-me/
hey dude
Great stuff! i got a lot of inspiration from this post
i went through this page four times
it is very interesting ….
am learning for social work
Thanks
wow nice info i’ll try this
A more complex, but very thorough system for PERMANENTLY banning spam for your whole life (we hope) is a simple plan at
http://www.spamplan.com/introduction.html
They lay it all out nicely– Free, no ads.
Also saves you the problems associated with moving to a NEW ISP. You will no longer have to inform all your friends etc. about your new email.
FYI SHOE…. when we submit, the automated message everyone sees has a GRAMMAR error.
You’re comment is awaiting moderation.
Should be Your comment.
thanks!
I tried your trick and am hoping it keeps my world spam-free. I’m embarrassed to admit that I misunderstood the instructions. (I read the post quickly, as usual.) I immediately tried to create a gmail account with my name+listcontrol@gmail.com. Gmail would not let me do this, of course.
I would never normally admit this type of mistake, but I told a co-worker about my silly mistake, and he had understood it the same way I did. Anyways… the post tells you not to CREATE a new email, but to just enter your current email in a different way. 
THanks for the tip!
Hey thanks for this! And thanks to everyone who commented with even more tips.
Awesome tip, shoe! I’ve been going around sites looking for free stuff, and yes, I do get tons of spam. That’s why I use separate emails for my personal business and freebie-finding hobby. Anyway I didn’t know you could track sites that give away your email, so thanks!
I’ve used this trick so much since you posted this Shoe.. thanks man
Great trick James. Thank you very much, it did work for me.
Thanks a lot, that is what we all need. Since i read your post and implement your advice, i saw a great deal of improvement. Many thanks.
Awesome tricky trick, thanks for sharing with us. Good Luck!