February 14th, 2006
Is CNET’s GameSpot Selling Email Addresses to Spammers?
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work at CNET and founded the gaming side of CNET’s business which was then Gamecenter.com and is now Gamespot.com. In no instance did I ever personally see this happen or ever hear of it as a CNET business practice anywhere in the company (1995-2000). But here’s a guy who uses a email fake address generator to see who sells his email to spammers and he was shocked when Gamespot turned up in his net.
So, I use the Spamgourmet service to generate temporary email addresses that look like examplewebsite.20.coneill@xoxy.net. This means that I can give www.examplewebsite.com this email address, and they can send me 20 emails and then the email address automatically expires if I don’t say otherwise. As a result, I can generally tell exactly what web site sold my email address to spammers, and it limits the damage they can do.
However, I didn’t expect to need this with Gamespot. I gave them the obvious Spamgourmet email address when I signed up, and received the normal confirmation email, etc. About a week or two later, I got spam to the same email address which seemed really odd.
……
To be clear, I don’t think Gamespot is selling my email address to spammers. It has occured to me that maybe it’s a problem with Spamgourmet, but I don’t see how that would be possible, since I’ve created other new addresses for other sites since this problem began, and I’ve received no spam from them. My best guess is that some server at Gamespot has been compromised, or an employee is doing this on their own.
More Here
Source: Clayton’s Weblog via diggdot.us
David Johnston says:
I doubt that CNet would knowingly sell any email addresses to spammers, especially since they have taken a pretty firm stance against spyware and done their best to remove all software containing it from download.com. Perhaps the system that stores account information/emails was compromised or an employee decided to make some cash on the side. It would be nice to see an official statement from CNet.
February 14th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Alice says:
I agree. Someone is taking advantage of their email system or something screwy is going on. Maybe news.com should get some reporters on it!
February 14th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
David Johnston says:
Hmmm, it seems there’s definitely something to this. Check out the SiteAdvisor page about GameSpot and spam: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/gamespot.com/email
February 14th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Kevin K says:
I do this type of spam trapping as well and it has happened to me in the past, most recently from Laptop Magazine which states clearly on their website that they will *never* sell or pass on my information yet I have received three SPAM mails sent to my laptopmag e-mail address in the last week alone.
At the same time, I have a Gmail account and have not used it for anything at all except for testing the account and sending mail to my brother (also a SPAM hater) and I have already received 25 or so SPAM mails there. From the best of my knowledge, Gmail also says they will not let my info go so how can I get SPAM at that account when it’s never really been used?!?!
Obviously there are clandestine sniffers out there gathering packets and gleaning e-mail addresses without the knowledge of the sender or recipient…. It pays to encrypt sensitive e-mail - if they can sniff your address, they can also sinff the contents!
February 15th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
Is CNET’s GameSpot Selling Email Addresses To Spammers?
In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work at CNET and founded the gaming side of CNET’s business which was then Gamecenter.com and is now Gamespot.com….
February 15th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Desmond Crisis says:
I too used to work at CNET… (Hi Alice! Love the site, it’s high on my daily read list.)
Although I haven’t been there for a few years, that company changes fast and they are doing tons of business with third parties. Gamespot has always struck me as operating more independently than other departments, so my most likely scenario is that they’re possibly doing business with someone who may not know better. Then again, the problem could be anything from predictive guessing all the way up to keyboard logging spyware. Tough to blame anyone anymore. I hope that a few more people try it out to see if the results are the same from different machines. Spamgourmet is also a hot tip I’ve been meaning to check out.
Desmond Crisis
(I’ll still never forget the early days when I was splitting my time between TV and IT there, someone needed a joystick for a shoot and Alice must have had the only computer with one connected. I still have no idea who did this but someone must have been in a hurry, because instead of disconnecting it like humans they -CUT- the cable leaving the connector in place. Had to be the Art department. TV people would NEVER!)
February 16th, 2006 at 8:41 am
angela says:
i also received this email … i searched the name that was given and a member page for this website appeared at www.listinferno.com
im not really sure WHAT it does, but they claim to be somewhat viral.. and about “building” the list. maybe it has something to do with it?
i really doubt this is directly related to gamestop mostly because.. i have never BEEN to gamestop nor have i signed up with them. the only recent sign up ive done is with youtube.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
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August 5th, 2008 at 6:48 am