spam from Garry & Warren Smith motors

[barney_rubbles]

i got a spam email today from from Garry & Warren Smith auto dealers. I have never had any dealings with them nor subscribed to their newsletters/emails. I did click on the link to see if they had any associations with Ebay & theres a link on the page http://www.gws.com.au/ to their ebay store. I suspect they may have gotten my email address from Ebay, hard to prove though.

I had a similair experience a mth or so ago with Shopping Express who i also suspect got my email address from Ebay. Has anyone else recevied the ones from the car dealers too?

[peri-landlubber]

I received spam from BuyinCoins dot com this morn, various merchandise for sale (similar look to feeBay) - looks like they are releasing our IDs to outsiders, as this was my buying ID only.

It went straight into the junk pile.

[lyndal1838]

---

@barney_rubbles wrote:

  I did click on the link to see if they had any associations with Ebay & theres a link on the page http://www.gws.com.au/ to their ebay store. I suspect they may have gotten my email address from Ebay, hard to prove though.

---

There's your answer.....you clicked on an external link and now you blame ebay!!!!

Just click on the Unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom of the page.

Probably the same with Shopping Express.

In 9 years and many thousands of transactions I have never had any spam that could possibly be traced to ebay relesing my email address.

[barney_rubbles]

@peri-lanlubber it certainly looks that way, thanks for that info, hard to prove though.

@lyndal, how do you explain how they got my email address in the first place then? Its still possible it was from Ebay, even if you had not personally experienced it. In 12 years and many transactions i had not had this issue with them up until this year. And with Shopping Express i never clicked on any links until i had already received half a dozen spam emails from them, i only clicked on the link to sniff out if they had links to Ebay. ps please don't !!! to me, its rude.

[lyndal1838]

I get spam emails from pharmaceutical companies in Canada and businesses in the USA that I have never heard of let alone dealt with.  Have you never heard of randomly generated email addresses.  As soon as you click on them you are letting them know that it is a live address.

Have you ever had a spam email from someone in Nigeria that you don't know?  Or from a UK bank about the massive inheritance waiting for you to claim?

Are you telling me that you have never given your email address to anyone but ebay?   Why does it have to be ebay that is passing it on?

[barney_rubbles]

yes i understand what you're saying, of course i have gotten the Nigerian scam & viagra sales emails etc But the thing that makes me suspicious these 2 companies have got the address from ebay is because both of them have a link to their ebay store on the page when i have clicked on the link in the email.

              And they are both Australian, its quite unusual in my experience that Aussie stores send spam if one has never bought from them. Nearly all the spams i have received (most of which get caught by the spam filters) have been from overseas or global companies, not local ones, and any local ones do not sell on ebay.

[nubian_treasures]

Why would you open spam email and click on a link thinking it has something to do with ebay? That is one of ways scammers steal your identity and vital information or infect your computer with viruses.

Ebay does not send spam emails. Any spams you get are not from ebay and should be deleted without ever opening them. 

Make it a habit to delete emails from anyone you have not had any type of dealings with. For instance, if you made an online purchase from a company, you will likely get emails telling you about sales that company has. Or some sites will ask if you want to receive emails so you will get emails from them but if you are getting emails from companies or people you never heard of or ever contacted, don't open them. 

Scammers have been in business for many years and are very successful because so many people open their bogus emails and click on links that could be stealing their information without their knowledge. 

Stay away from the spams.