eBay unfriendly to use of gmail as email consolidator

Unfriendly eBay sent this to me.

Oops. We weren’t able to send your message to XXXshop, because the email address you used to send this message, XXX@gmail.com, isn’t linked to your eBay account. 

To keep eBay safe, we need you to send messages from a registered eBay email address. This will prevent your messages from being blocked in the future.

I have no wish to record my gmail account with anybody other than Google.  It’s part of my Spam identification mechanism.  I give every supplier their own email address for me to track down misuse, such as passing on details to a Spam generator.  It has worked, to the embarrassment of a major software company.

Does it really make eBay any safer if  it blocks unregistered addresses?  They know who I am.

Staff supplied spam list

Quarkside’s spam sleuthing helped to identify a person who is no longer employed by the respectable company.  Prompt action was taken and a company wide letter has been sent to all staff reminding of them of their responsibilities under the Data Protection Act.  I hope that the Information Commissioner has been informed.

The list was used to create spam.  How wide this has spread, only time will tell.  It was interesting that the spam led to a company that has “adopted a pioneering approach to the deployment of modern technologies such as MDM, yet couple this with a no-nonsense attitude to advice, governance and analysis.”  If this is a no-nonsense attitude to governance, then their internal processes are worthy of deeper inspection.  No-nonsense should not mean avoiding due diligence on sources of personal information.

 

Spam Sleuthing

Spam is robbery of Internet resources.  A detection tactic used for many years has been the registration on sites with an email name that identifies the company, from AA@… to ZZ@… .  It is very simple to do if you have a domain name and a mail server.

One such Spam mail was received yesterday from a most respectable company.  There are many routes the spammer may have used to obtain the email address, but some are far from savoury.  Yes, it could be a trojan at this end, but it is not in any address book and only exists in some stored gmail messages.  It may be a member of staff who left employment with a very useful list of contacts.  Could it be trojan at the respectable Web site?

Quarkside will report back if a solution is found (or not).