I use disposable email addresses pretty aggressively. When I need to give someone (specifically websites) an email address, I create an address specific to that site. This has allowed me to easily block those sites that send me spam (or sell my data). I am very disciplined about this and it has kept a lot of spam away from my eyes.
The few times I’ve had my data sold, I report this as a privacy policy violation to the site. Tonight, I reported such a violation to SnowCovered.com (lack of link intentional).
After I sent that email and closed down a few other tasks for the night, I spun up Google Reader, where I see:
I chuckled at the coincidence of this.
For the record, here are the other sites I have had to block over the years. Again, omission of links is intentional.
- Bravo TV (bravotv.com)
- Borders (borders.com)
- ClassMates.com
- Nero (nero.com)
- software-intl.com
- 2insure4less.com
- AutomatedQA (automatedqa.com)
- ServiceObjects (serviceobjects.com)
- Subaru of America (my.subaru.com)
Most of these sites just spammed me relentlessly themselves, but the ones in bold had their databases breached and I started receiving phishing scams and/or other general spam at the addresses I’d provided them.