euroderf's Journal: My Rights Offline?

When I came to this country 5 years ago, I thought it was a nation of untarnished ideals. Leaving the old Europe behind, the Europe of decaying totalitarianism and rising statism, a Europe damaged by the horrors of Socialism, I thought that in America I would find the freedoms I had always yearned for.

Of course, I was wrong. Not completely wrong - there is a lot about America I adore. But one of the things I have come to despise is the God everyone else here worships - commercialism. And the one facet of commercialism I hate more than any other is advertising, direct mailing in particular.

As you all know, Slashdot started it's subscription service last week. I've been a reader since day one, so I thought what the hell, I'll give this a go. Luckily I had an ancient Paypal account from a year ago I had never used, so that reduced the hassles of signing up. So now I have Slashdot without ads. It's great.

Today, I got an ad in the post for a Gateway computer. That's superb, except that the middle name it was addressed to was "Thompson". The first name and last name were mine, but the middle name was Thompson. Which is funny, and let me tell you why.

I use something I call "spam poisoning". When I sign up for a service, I use a different middle name every time. It's completely random. Whenever I get spam mail, the spam uses the middle name of the person who gave me away. I only gave Thompson to my PayPal account, and that account has only paid for a Slashdot subscription.

Now, I don't know what's going on here. I don't know who did what. But damn it, I want some answers. Isn't this the kind of thing we're supposed to raise awareness for? Isn't this what we're here to STOP? I received a packet of ads from some CD club today, also to me with middle name Thompson. If this starts to pick up, I'm gonna have a fit.

You're not the only one, I think

[Joe Groff]

I too am a long-time Slashdot reader, and I absolutely jumped at the chance to finally be able to put some money in to help support the site. The lack of ads is just icing on the cake compared to the knowledge that my money will go towards making Slashdot even better than it is.

But I, too, have been receiving some strange bits of junkmail these past few days. I'm generally careful about divulging my personal info; I always fill in fake addresses whenever possible, carefully read the privacy policies of all services I sign up for, and generally don't let companies know any more about me than they need to. But I knew I could trust Slashdot. Rob himself once said [slashdot.org], "If we do [ads], we'll be as respectful to you as we possibly can. I hate ads just as much as everyone else, but remember if we have banner ads, we're doing it for the forces of good." Or at least I thought I could. My junkmail volume has practically doubled since subscribing to Slashdot, and it looks as if I'm not alone. And frankly, I'm pissed.

Similar method used here

[Eeyonne]

I own my domain, so what i do is give a different email address for each site I register at

[e-mail]
paypal.com@mydomain.c om

if ever i get spam through I can block it off easily, and know where it came from.

PayPal

[LordNimon]

My guess is that PayPal gave away your information, not Slashdot. Slashdot is working on non-PayPal payment methods.

This is the reason why I use a Sneakemail address for PayPal. I can control the spam. I think you might want to go to PayPal and check your privacy options. You probably need to opt-out.

Re:PayPal

[euroderf]

This is a possibility, but I see a couple of problems with it that lead me to believe OSDN was the source.

First of all, I signed up for my Paypal account a long time ago. Like most slashdotters, I am something of an early adopter, and so I have had a paypal account for a full year prior to subscribing to slashdot, and all spam free.

It was only when I signed for slashdot that I started to get post using 'Thompson' as a middle name.

I'd rather not think that slashdot is responsible. It may be OSDN as a whole, or, elternatively, I could be mistaken about the whole thing. It just makes me uneasy.

Re:PayPal

[Roblimo]

OSDN doesn't sell mailing lists, period, and doesn't have your PayPal signup address/contact info anyway. Only PayPal has all that. Your *use* of the PayPal account is probably what trigged the direct mail list sendout.

I am one of the many people who will not use PayPal, period. I refused to give them access to my checking account when I (like you) signed up for one of their trials when they first got started, left it at that. Slashdot will have cc sub option very soon. Necessary IMO. (Not that we don't all get -- sigh -- ads from credit card companies like mad.)

- Robin