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Author Topic: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address  (Read 4807 times)

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Offline Omega1982

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Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« on: December 08, 2015, 11:15:58 PM »
I just returned from the FSU.  During my trip I met several woman in places such as a train station, restaurant, etc.  I gave several women my mobile phone number and e mail address.  None of them attempted to communicate with me.  However, I got an e mail from a game site called G2A in which someone has created a profile with my e mail address.  I have no idea how this was done.  Since then I have changed my password on my e mail and I have contacted the site which seems to have good customer service options.  Has this happened to anyone?  Is there any risk involved here? 

Offline WestCoast

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2015, 11:37:41 PM »
Omega1982 someone probably came across your name, mobile phone number and email and decided to have a little fun with you. If you gave this information to the women via a business card or they wrote it down someone other than the women could have come across your information and created the profile. According to Tom's Hardware, a respected IT website, G2A is a legit website.

Creating a profile on a most websites is easy. You gave out your name, mobile phone number and email to a number of women anyone of them could have created the profile. Take a look at G2A's profile creation. You gave away all the information anyone would need to create a profile in your name.

Always use separate email accounts for your bride hunting adventures. Separate phone numbers too.   

Other than that little spot of bother how did your FSU trip go?
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Offline msmoby

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2015, 02:07:10 AM »
Westy is correct in that a separate email [ and phone number ] for potential partners is a good idea.. These days the likes of whatsapp and Viber are attached to such things


I cannot say approaching complete strangers and giving out contact details would be my 'tactic' for starting off


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Online andrewfi

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2015, 05:40:06 AM »
Set up an account with a proper email provider such as fastmail.com and give EVERYONE a different email address. For example, if you meet somebody called Natasha then tell her to use the email address natomega@yourprefix.fastmail.com or you might give me 'andrewfi@yourprefix.fastmail.com

With Fastmail you can choose a domain from a list of, I think, hundreds - or use your own. I do both and have a load of 'aliases' all pointing at my main account and almost nobody knows my 'real' email address.

So, I can freely give you an example of how it works. I use a Fastmail domain as follows: fea.st (yeah, a little odd, I have never seen anyone else but me use it.) My username on that alias is 'nothere' (yes, really, I do use something like this!) so my basic email address on that domain is nothere (at) fea.st
But by using unique prefixes I ALWAYS know if somebody has misused my email address. So, if I deal with WordPress the email address is wordpress@nothere.fea.st if I deal with RUA then the addy becomes rua@nothere.fea.st and because I can filter them automatically even if a spammer picks them up I know where the leak is and it gets zapped before I see any emails - and, of course, an automated spam report is made which serves, over time, time blacklist the sender email address.

The odd thing is that, in truth, very few people misuse email addresses. The biggest issue I find is when a marketer on whose mailing list I am, of have been, goes out of business, which happens a lot, sometimes their promises about never selling or renting emails to third parties gets forgotten and they DO sell the addresses to some broker or other leading to a little flood of spam, but, again, as soon as that happens, the addy is filtered and everything goes to spam, generating the spam report.

The idea of having a single email address is soo 1990's. Use email addresses to match your needs.
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Offline Jeffery

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2015, 08:21:45 AM »
Set up an account with a proper email provider such as fastmail.com and give EVERYONE a different email address. For example, if you meet somebody called Natasha then tell her to use the email address natomega@yourprefix.fastmail.com or you might give me 'andrewfi@yourprefix.fastmail.com...

The idea of having a single email address is soo 1990's. Use email addresses to match your needs.

I'll share with others my secret, which is similar to yours.

I have set up multiple addresses with categories.
For example:
xxx-financial@xxx.com
xxx-travel@xxx.com
xxx-computing@xxx.com
xxx-junk@xxx.com  (when I'm not sure about the person/company)
etc.

This way when an e-mail comes in, I know right away what the general nature of it will be.

Online andrewfi

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2015, 08:34:18 AM »
Similar strategy, same principle.

Because I use loads of domains the classification by type tends to happen based on domain but I don't worry too much about it - if it ain't already hidden away as spam and it has a sensible header then I am probably going to open it!
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Offline Jeffery

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2015, 11:41:16 AM »
Similar strategy, same principle.

Because I use loads of domains the classification by type tends to happen based on domain but I don't worry too much about it - if it ain't already hidden away as spam and it has a sensible header then I am probably going to open it!

The strategy is used more for managing/sorting my mail than it is for dealing with spam, although it does serve as a spam safeguard as well.

Offline AKA Luke

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2015, 12:38:16 PM »
Omega what prior communication had you had with these women before passing your card?

I remember on my trip to Saint Petersburg finding several gorgeous waitresses in various establishments. Had I wanted to communicate with any of them after moving on from said establishment I'd have probably tried a bit of small talk with her first before giving her my deets - my first TR I even mention a giggling waitress who was so hot and smiling at me lots. Maybe she'd have responded to a 'card' of mine but I can't imagine many women contacting some random bloke who handed them a card in the street. Unless of course she was giving you the come to bed eyes and sexual interest was obvious.




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Offline Manny

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #8 on: December 09, 2015, 12:44:49 PM »
Similar strategy, same principle.

Because I use loads of domains the classification by type tends to happen based on domain but I don't worry too much about it - if it ain't already hidden away as spam and it has a sensible header then I am probably going to open it!

The strategy is used more for managing/sorting my mail than it is for dealing with spam, although it does serve as a spam safeguard as well.

I am less organised than Andrew and more like Jeffery. I use a bunch of emails for different things, so the general theme is segregated. For stuff likely to generate spam, I use old AOL addresses I have had for many years (back from when they were my ISP) that I regard as disposable now. I don't use any US providers like gmail for anything that matters as they access the mail to serve advertising and are generally pretty ropey in regards to privacy.

I am actually liking mail.ru/inbox.ru at the moment (really fast on the phone too). I use it for some of my Russian facing stuff as it doesn't automatically bin anything with a .ru at the end as many western providers do. It also forces you to read some Cyrillic words which is never a bad thing.

If I was contacting random women like the OP, I would certainly have a dedicated email address for that. Same as when I am in China, I use a dedicated email address for new contacts (till I know them) as I expect to be on every spam list going within a week otherwise.
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Offline Manny

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #9 on: December 09, 2015, 12:52:51 PM »
I met several woman in places such as a train station, restaurant, etc.  I gave several women my mobile phone number and e mail address.  None of them attempted to communicate with me. 

How does that tactic work in the US? Do you do that there too?
Read a trip report from North Korea >>here<< - Read a trip report from South Korea, China and Hong Kong >>here<<

Look what the American media makes some people believe:
Putin often threatens to strike US with nuclear weapons.

Online andrewfi

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #10 on: December 09, 2015, 12:57:56 PM »
HOHOHOHO! My email is anything but organised.

All I am doing is using a standard, but often unimplemented, function of email addressing to create emails on the fly. I use a similar technique for some of my work where I am generating literally tens of thousands of accounts, all of which have to be able send and receive emails correctly. (No, for the permanently confused - Westy, we don't do spamming, ever!).

it is the on-the-fly capability that got me to be using Fastmail some 15 years ago. I started to use mail.ru back when mail.ru was still an experimental system, still have an account there forwarding me emails to accounts that have been pretty much dormant since 2003/4 just so folks can contact me if they wish.

There's really no need to have multiple accounts, it just gets confusing. Set up one, forward all emails from those old accounts to your 'central' account and maybe file emails from, for example, AOL into an AOL folder. I don't bother with that, they all just go into the pot apart from some mails which are, shall we say, functional, rather than designed to be read.

I pay for Fastmail, they don't do a free account any longer. If you currently use a free service take a free test run with Fastmail - I bet you get your credit card out after a few weeks!
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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #11 on: December 09, 2015, 01:02:19 PM »
I run my own domain with a catch-all email address.

So no matter what I put before the @ , it all goes in the same box. And then I can filter them out quite easily.

The biggest nuisance is linkedin. I am currently at the 4th linked in email address, because of the volume of spam I get on there.
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Offline Manny

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #12 on: December 09, 2015, 01:08:15 PM »
I run my own domain with a catch-all email address.

So no matter what I put before the @ , it all goes in the same box. And then I can filter them out quite easily.

I used to do that with my domains, RUA used to have one for example, but I found a LOT of spam is routinely aimed at admin@domain.com when no such address exists. Also daft stuff like take down notices and angrygrams are aimed at admin@ or webmaster@ and the catch all caught them all. It was handy for identifying who enabled spam though. I used to make them up this way as I went along. So if I bought something from widgets.com I would use widgets@mydomain as the email. Every now and again I would receive a ton of spam, usually from someone who had harvested the email from an eBay transaction. But how to stop it even when you know who? Why I now use disposable ones.
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Look what the American media makes some people believe:
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Offline Omega1982

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #13 on: December 09, 2015, 06:41:25 PM »
I will definitely use a different e mail address going forward. 

One always tends to overlook something when traveling. 

Andrew, I will definitely look into this more modern e mail system, definitely a valuable tool. 

Is there anything to worry about?  I sent an e mail to the gaming site's customer service support team so they can tell me whose name is being used and the location of the user. 

At least they must delete that fake profile. 

Offline Omega1982

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #14 on: December 09, 2015, 06:45:19 PM »
I met several woman in places such as a train station, restaurant, etc.  I gave several women my mobile phone number and e mail address.  None of them attempted to communicate with me. 

How does that tactic work in the US? Do you do that there too?

Here I don't because I live here and have more time to return to the restaurant, etc to make more conversation and then take it from there. 

The key issue is lack of time while traveling, so everything must be more compressed. 

I was in Tiraspol for only a few hours.  I came across these two ladies, made as much conversation as I could and gave them my mobile and e mail. 

The third was a waitress from Minsk which I had actually met in 2014 but at the moment was occupied with another conquest and had ignored her. 

They were all very pleasant, smiling and talkative. 

Offline Omega1982

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #15 on: December 09, 2015, 06:46:37 PM »
Given that they are using my e mail for the gaming site, I would love to know what payment method is being used...

Offline Omega1982

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2015, 07:10:53 PM »
I went into the gaming site and was able to change the password associated with the fake account. 

Now the perpetrators will not be able to use that fake account. 

I also changed the pw on my e mail in case it might have also been hacked. 

I tried logging into the gaming site but the account is blocked.  I had e mailed their customer service last night advising of the fraud.  Apparently they took care of it. 

I sent them another e mail now. 

It is a shame I could not log into the site.  I could have seen the location of the user and perhaps some useful information. 

Online andrewfi

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Re: Risks associated with giving a woman your e mail address
« Reply #17 on: December 09, 2015, 11:37:52 PM »
Maybe the  was no intent to use the account but to receive the affiliate referral fee for the new account.
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