Groupon sold my e-Mail address



The idea behind <a href="http://www.groupon.de/" title="Groupon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">groupon</a> is to make it easy (and cheaper) for new customers to try out a service or product. The whole site really looks like racket but I used it some time ago. I have the common practice that I create an e-mail address for every single service I register to. So I used an e-mail address of the style "mymail-groupon@mydomain.tld" for it. Today I got an e-mail with the subject "Abmahnung Ihrer aussehender Rechnung über 262,00 Euro" (impolite german for "Reminder for a payment about 262 euros") from an debt collecting agency. <span id="more-1723"></span> The full From-line looks like this: ```email From: "K&LWallArt Inkassoburo" <barbara.schrank@t-online.de> ``` In the mail, they very bluntly tell me to pay the money within 3 days or else. They gave a footer looking like this: ```email K&LWallArt Ltd. Telefon: (+49) 237 4XXXXXX Umsatzsteuer-Nr.: DE242039481 Asperg Direktor: Nelli Krüger ``` Out of curiosity, I called the number &ndash; that I removed from the footer for privacy reasons of the real owner &ndash; and a german guy was on the other side of the line &ndash; which I expected since it is a number from <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iserlohn-Letmathe" title="Iserlohn-Letmathe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Iserlohn-Letmathe</a>. I only asked if I am connected to the "K&L WallArt Ltd." and he said no so I excused me and said goodbye. I hope for that poor guy that they use different numbers for different targets. <strong>@Groupon: You suck! Don't sell my e-mail address! Or: don't let one of your partners sell my e-mail address! Or: Pay attention to the e-mail addresses stored in your system!</strong> Ah I nearly forgot: of course there was an attachment named "<a href="https://www.virustotal.com/de/file/96b55b6a5e1ed6201bff7da1b2573b7dd2ea3013a920ebe708e7079238ed186f/analysis/1365154586/" title="Virus Total Scan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Produktnummer- 1580698766 XXXX XXXXXXXXXX.zip</a>" (the Xs where my name, it seems that another guy called Markus Kowalski also uploaded it to virus total) contaning another zip file named "<a href="https://www.virustotal.com/de/file/9356b716ee81623e1037f82a5d23faf75fa1c2e2d9f60bd958481980fc58c0e1/analysis/1365152369/" title="Virus Total Scan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mahnung Ihrer Rechnung vom 04.04.2013.zip</a>" containg a file named "<a href="https://www.virustotal.com/de/file/25ec734f6e2d63a640a047d94c71cef6eca574163af0ce00b2fdf8561432c38f/analysis/1365147890/" title="Virus Total Scan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mahnung Ihrer Rechnung vom 04.04.2013.com</a>". /p Update (2013-08-31): A similar thing happened to my Hamachi / LogMeIn e-Mail Address. Update (2014-12-06): And Adobe too.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *