Guru sells my info after I cancel his product!

iv'e had the same problem, people some advice please?

Have you tried asking them? Possibly, if you ask enough of them, and explain the situation, you might find one co-operative enough to tell you? It's going to be difficult without that, isn't it? I wouldn't fancy it, myself, I must say.

Personally, I'd walk away from it. But I do see that you'd actually be doing all of us a favor if (a) you're right (which seems pretty likely?) and (b) you managed to prove it and take some sort of action over it (maybe very difficult?).

Good luck, anyway.

A bit of friendly advice... DON'T!

Cut and pasted directly from the forum rules:

The main overriding rule for this forum is this:

Rule #1

If you have a problem with another Warrior, a Guru, or God, take it up with them directly. Not here. No exceptions.

Seems a simple enough solution would be to just delete the email account and move on. You can't name him here and you have nothing to gain from spending any time on this.

A while back I set up a new email account, and have never used it. No one know I have it, except the host and whois.

Yet it fills with spam!

Maybe this "guru" really didn't give out your email at all, and you just think he did.

Imagine what harm you could cause by telling the world, when he isn't the culprit.

That is just one of the reasons for rule #1.

:-Don

Yeah just move on, once your email address has been compromised there is almost nothing you can do. Especially if they originate from countries who don't enforce anti spam regulations.

I have a few email addresses, the ones i use to buy CB, WSO etc products are spammed to death the others not. Coincidence? i think not...

I have heard of a couple of gurus that do that, so I wouldn't be surprised. But as mentioned above, without proof would it really be a wise choice to blame them publicly?

I agree I have set up new email accounts and had them fill up with spam w/out giving my email to a single person. That is because they have email generators now and days doesn't matter if you give your email away. Someone can still generate it and sell it to spammers.

In fact, a lot of people are just generating emails everyday and sending spam to them. So imagine this ok, before you even set up that email address, someone was trying to send spam to it. Like yesterday when you didn't even have it, a marketer was still sending emails to it, as crazy as it sounds I've found it to be true.

This is what marketing has turned into it I guess, spamming emails that don't even exist. Marketers are just that desperate now and days. But they do it because most the emails they generate wind up being live accounts.

-Red

you know, honestly i am a bit troubled by all the people saying just forget it and walk away.

yea, thats the easy thing to do. but if this guy did sell or even give away a customers email address after saying he wouldn't, then he has violated the law.

the idea that its just the way business is done or that you should just cut your losses is what allows these guys to behave the way they do.

to all you newbies out there getting screwed around like this. DON't just accept it. fight it. If you don't they will screw thousands more people.

To all you decent folks out there suggesting to turn a blind eye or let it go...Come on people have a little bit of moral fiber and willingness to stick up for whats right.

The willingness to accept this sort of nonsense is a huge reason why the FTC is getting all up in your business now.

--- end rant ---

by the way, there is a lot you can do with ip tracking and cpu history to prove you had no involvement with these other people who are emailing you now. You have the right to demand they explain how you got on their list and why they feel they have the right to email you.

you can cause a boat load of trouble for anyone participating in such nonsense buy either buying or selling your information illegally. The web host or autoresponser service of the guy that you feel is sending spam is a great place to start.

It is their responsibility to prove they have the right to email you. not your responsibility to prove they don't have the right to email you. Then they will likely be more cooperative in revealing more info about the true "guru" offender.

Anyone who sends me an email has the responsibility to prove why they have the right to do that. anyone complicit in allowing someone to send spam to any email address can be held liable.

We as a group just need to start making these guys prove stuff. The burden of proof is on the sender and anyone allowing them to send you emails. Those people include web hosts, domain registers, autoresponder services, and smtp providers.

The sender has to prove it they have the right to email me... not the other way around. You guys are thinking the guy getting spammed has the burden of proof.

All you have to do is send an email to the hosting company of any url mentioned in an email i believe to be spam, and i assure you the person sending the email responds back to me withing just a couple hours almost every time.

The web hosts and AR companies don't want to be involved in this fight. They drop spammers everyday.

Its not hard at all. use whohosts.com to find out who the hosting company is for any url mentioned in any email you feel is spam. Then contact the host saying you believe you received spam promoting that url. They will ask you to forward the email. Then the host will get the offender to respond or they will simply turn the site off.

Fight this crap or the FTC will be all over all of us micro managing honest people running legit businesses. We can choose to self police ourselves, or we can sit back and wait for the FTC to come in and start making it damn hard to do business for "the little guys".

also, just because a company has a link to a privacy policy does not at all mean they are agreeing to not sell or give away your information.

in fact the recent google and FB privacy policy changes have come under a lot of fire because they are so open that it really provides users with very little privacy.

my point is that i could put a privacy policy on my site that says i WILL be selling your information to 10 people. As long as you agree to, and I abide by what my privacy policy says, it can say almost anything.

As a consumer when you opt-in or make a purchase you are agreeing to their privacy policy. Even if you didn't read it. That means, that companies can and do often times make their privacy policies very porous.

David, I would be, too, except that it's so easy to get that spam without even releasing the address anywhere.

And, to pick one example, wouldn't the OP look foolish if the address was gotten by spammers because he had malware on his own machine?


Paul

Sounds like steve is pro spammer

The concept of reporting spammers sounds like an enormous waste of time. Ok so they get their site taken down, make a new one, I just wasted 5 minutes of my life for nothing. Spammer is back up, new site, new list, spamming new people.

I think the real issue is the FTC is not involved ENOUGH. Not the people need to start their own revolution reporting spammers. I mean really, if that happened, it would just motivate the FTC that much more.

So seriously, delete the freakn email, it takes 2 seconds to do. Create a new account. Then learn how to use the internet. Don't download warez or torrents, secure your cookies, have good antivirus software, use a paid/secure email provider. I just think PREVENTION is always a lot more intelligent than dealing with problems after the fact.

-Red

This has happened to me its part of the business just move on and next time you buy a product just use a throwaway email address.

Once I set up a new email account, received some emails and have never used it later for about a YEAR.
Then I asked one person to send me a scanned document, gave my email address, and then I started to receive spam to this address. There is no way this person could gave my address to spammers intentionally.

I suppose there was a virus/trojan on that computer and once my address showed up, trojan owners got it.

So there might be no intention of that Guru, he could be a victim.

I have had the exact same experience. I set up an email account for one of my websites. To my knowledge this email was never made public, used on the site or ever used by me.

The mailbox started to fill up with spam as if by magic.

How anyone ever got the email address, I do not know. But the spam keeps coming and coming.

As Alepo, points out, it may have been a Trojan, however this one email account is the one that receives the majority of spam. I will probably end up deleting this account.

So I guess the lesson is: be very careful and certain before you accuse anyone of spamming you. I'm not saying that they didn't, but there is no way you can be certain they did.

If all else fails. Try playing dirty and spam him.

Since it's a "new" email account and more than likely not your main email account, just make another one.....

i fully realize that spam does not have to and in most cases does not even start with an email being sold. There are lots of ways anyone's email ends up on a spammers list.

But the idea that all of us should just ignore the spam and accept it is what i was troubled by. None of us should just accept it. There are things you can do. If you really believe that someone has sold your email address to other people, then you do have a number of ways you can be very proactive in getting to the bottom of it.

@Steve,

I am not sure where you get the idea that those that facilitate spam to be sent are not liable. They are. You can't drive the getaway car in a robbery and then claim you weren't a part of the robbery.

These groups are what what most western countries are using as the first line of defense to fight spam, intellectual property theft, and many other legal compliance issues.

They are absolutely held responsible after they have been made aware of a client of potentially violating laws. Once you or I make them aware of a problem, from that point on, they are absolutely potentially liable.

You are correct about hosting companies in rogue states not responding. However, the vast majority (number wise) of spammers have some portion of their systems using western companies. meaning their domain registrant, their hosting, their smtp server relay, or their merchant account systems.

The vast majority of the time, these emails are not coming from serious pro scammers who have covered all their legal basis. They are coming from people just looking to make a quick buck. Not people who have planned out the perfect spamming system.

Steve, where did you get this "Spam emails are NOT illegal." That was the whole point of the the "can spam act". It setup a list of guidelines that make some spam message illegal and punishable by stiff financial penalties. You are correct that not every message we commonly refer to as spam is illegal, but true spam is definitely illegal. However, thats not even really this issue the OP was talking about.

To the OP. if you really want to test this and push it, then setup a new email and repeat the process. If the same thing happens, then nail the guy. Report it to everyone of his providers. Keep detailed records.

I don’t think you should waste your time or spend your energy with this matter, even if you are right and you want to defend justice.

There is no justice on Earth (online and offline). Everything is only a game.

On the other hand, there are so many spammers online that even if you’ll get rid of one of them, there are many others you’ll never get rid of.

Now you must get revenge by selling HIS address to spammers.

/relaxiamkidding

Be aware that there are email scraping software that can scrape your email from anywhere you leave a footprint, e.g. from any account you may have at social networks, bookmarking sites, blog comments, forum profiles etc. It will be extremly difficult to prove that someone has given it away. I'd just pass it over move on with good things. Life is too good to spend it for petty revenges.

I have paid a full time VA for several years now to help go after these kinds of people. I get hate mail almost daily from people pissed off that i am helping to make them follow the rules. You can't sit by idle or you and all of us will get more spam tomorrow than we did today.

This idea that someone else will fix it is what is killing the USA and many other civilized nations. You are someone else's someone.

You can get results. Most won't bother because they are too lazy. But some of us do fight this stuff and win at it on a daily basis.

There are so many ways that another person may get your e-mail.

1-friends
2-social media sites
3-your site as long as you have one
4-0ther forums
5-e-mail scrapers

Many people have several Gmail accounts, hotmail accts some in reserve and not being used. They still get spam on them.

We manage an apartment complex and have a email addy for the office and contractors to use for the complex only. Still spammed.

Yahoo is quite good on sending spam emails to the spam folder. Only one or two escape sometimes.

Use Yahoo, and you’ll be glad with their free filter.

hey, now a days there are some sites which are selling the emails on bulk like 40000, 50000, 100000, etc. by niche based targeted emails.

So Aware of when you provide your email to any website, first check the website and product owner whether can trust these peoples and websites. Other wise use any other email, not your personal.