Heineken Green Carpet Ubc Spam

[Highwayman]

Just got an e-mail from heinekenthai.com

Interesting in that it was addressed to a disposable e-mail address l used for UBC. As l use a different disposable address for every newsletter, software download etc. l know that Heineken could only have gotten this e-mail address from UBC.

The e-mail is a Flash advertisement for Heineken which doesn't make a bit of sense to me anyway. I opened it thinking there might have been some special offer for free beer but no such luck.

Whenever l sign up for anything on the internet l'm always careful to uncheck any boxes where they want to send you promotions etc. so l'm wondering how UBC can sell/provide an e-mail address l gave to them to another company with no connection to UBC (as far as l know). I would have about 100 disposable e-mail addresses in use but this is the very first time one of them has ever been passed on to a third party to send spam. It's the sort of behaviour you might have expected in the past from some dodgy software vendor, not a well known company like UBC.

What ever happened to privacy issues or doesn't that apply to UBC?

[george]

If it is a fresh spam you could report it to http://www.spamcop.net

[terdsak_12]

I got one, didn't bother reading it though.

[Shola]

Send the ad back to UBC via email about 100 times

[phuketsiam]

i got this too, and maybe from ubc, but no spam laws in thailand i believe

[stumonster]

UBC offers you an email address? does it also provide you with webspace for a personal website?

I have seen a few of these providers who offer a personal webspace having a listing of all the addresses for the personal sites in the format http://www.providernamehere.com/~login/ or similar.

from there it is an easy step to harvest the email addresses connected to those logins.

they could well have been easily stripped in that way

[Highwayman]

Stuntmonster, that's not it.

I have a Yahoo! account. To protect your basic e-mail address from spam they allow you to set up sub-accounts. For example if my e-mail address was [email protected] l don't actually give that address out to anyone. I create a keyword e.g. rio1234 and set up accounts using that keyword e.g. [email protected], [email protected], rio1234-bangkokpost.com etc. etc.

For every newsletter, software registration etc. l create a new sub account exclusively for that service (it takes a few seconds). All mail to the sub accounts is delivered to the main account, the name of which is never revealed to your contacts. In that way if someone starts to spam you, send you a virus etc. you simply delete the sub-account. They can't spam you if the account no longer exists. Your main e-mail account, in this example [email protected] remains unaffected as you can cut off contact with the problem contact without any effect on everyone else.

As my address Heineken sent the advertising to is only used for UBC then it is obvious that UBC have sold their e-mail list to them. That address has never been listed on the web so the chances of them harvesting it is a billion to one (it's a lot longer than my examples btw). Mostly when you sign up for newsletters etc. on the web companies nowadays make a point of telling you that they will keep your address private and not share it with other companies without your permission. I don't have a problem with Heineken buying it, l do have a problem with UBC selling it. I haven't given them permission to do this and from a well know public company this sort of behaviour is very poor. Who else do they plan on selling their mailing list to? Once they sell it what's to stop the buyer on-selling it. Fortunately l can close down this account but if it were my only e-mail account l would be even more unhappy that a major company had opened up my account to being spammed for their personal gain.

[LivinLOS]

I also use a similar system with catch all forwarding..

It actually showed a forum up as having thier security compromised and enail addresses harvested from thier MySQL database.. They consitantly denied it until I was able to prove that the sub email could only have come from them.. Then it was red faces and upgrade and patch the forum SW..

I would be very tempted to mailbomb all the ubc emails I could find with the hieneken advert.. Eye for an eye..

[george]

Please email me [admin at thaivisa.com] the Heineken email with the full headers, and I will write an article about it, and include the warning to Thaivisa.com members.

Thanks!

[grahamb]

Whenever l sign up for anything on the internet l'm always careful to uncheck any boxes where they want to send you promotions etc. so l'm wondering how UBC can sell/provide an e-mail address l gave to them to another company with no connection to UBC (as far as l know).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Did the UBC website actually have a box to check/uncheck? I've found that when I've had to enter my email address in Thailand (e.g. on Thai Airways' site), there isn't a box to check to avoid spam. That makes me assume that unfortunately the companies here don't care about spam and would be quite happy to sell my email address on. That's also a reason why very few have it here...

Thanks for the info about the sub-accounts at Yahoo. I've got a freebie Yahoo account that I rarely use - do you know if is this service available on that or only the premium one? I've it's available on the freebie service, do the sub-accounts expire through lack of use?

[Highwayman]

Graham, can't remember for sure if there was a checkbox when l registered at UBC although l do take a look at any conditions when l sign up for something, more so than most people l'm sure, as l'm wary of being spammed or inviting spyware onto my PC. Any reputable company does not pass your address on to others by using some clause in the fine print imo.

I have about 100 disposable Yahoo! addresses, including 8 Thai related ones. Never had someone pass on any of those addresses to a third party before.

Next time you open your Yahoo! e-mail click on Mail Options in the top right handcorner and see if there is an option called Address Guard. I have a free Australian Yahoo! account which has several features that users in other parts of the world only get with the paid version. The sub accounts don't expire so long as you keep using your main account.

Think of the sub-account as a bridge which mail has to cross to get to your main account. If someone starts to abuse the sub address l've given them then it's simple to remove the bridge.

There is a good Flash presentation somewhere on the Yahoo! site which explains how it all works. Unlike some free web-mail providers, Yahoo! have made a genuine effort to control spam, with some success. The only spam l get now is some that is redirected from an old e-mail account, 90% of which l can filter out anyway.