Seller has violated policy... who to contact?

[ramadsebas]

After purchasing an item I've received an email from a third party associated with the seller, indicating that they've divulged my information to a third party. Surely this is a major violation of eBay seller policies. If not then it is a violation of laws in various countries as I'm sure you're aware... so who do I report this issue to? The police? Because the guy lives not more than an hours drive away; I can have him legally charged for spam if I like...

[*tippy*toes*]

Spoiler

I'd be surprised if he opted to go lower than $10M. After all, he is a victim of crime, he is traumatised, so there has to be some pain and suffering money there too. He'll likely never work again. He'll have to sell his kids. Then there will be the lifelong counselling for mental anguish.

Spoiler

Nah, for all that, he should go $20M

[tazzieterror]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:
I'm not downplaying the serious of anything. I find it just as annoying as you. It's even worse when some idiot accidentally subscribes to a marketing firm that gives your address out to a zillion others and you end up getting a dozen newsletters a day from it. That happened to me when I sold something on facebook and gave the buyer my paypal email to pay me. They obviously copied and pasted it and then forgot they were using my email when they subscribed to the other place. catches more flies than vinegar (you do know what that means, don't you???).

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I have (what I think is) a clever solution to this: I have unique email addresses for each (major) online account I have.  So for example, my email address with eBay might be eBayOct2018@mydomain.com and it is only eBay who have it.  If in six months I start receiving spam email to that address, I might create eBayMar2019@mydomain.com, update my account details in eBay to use that, and kill the existing address.  At the same time it also tells me that eBay are being sloppy with my personal information, so I'd know to be wary of them.

It's a little bit more involved that maintaining a single address, but I like the extra control it allows me.

I also create a new disposable "temp" email address each month for websites that demand one, which I'll then delete another month down the track.

[brerrabbit585]

I've got at least 13 email addresses at the moment. 🙂

[davewil1964]

I'm slack (or not afflicted with paranoia). I only have 4. 1 for each eBay account and 1 spare.

[brerrabbit585]

13 is my lucky number. Just kidding. 🙂 I used to use all of them but not so much now. I figured if I started getting spam it'd be easier to tell where it was coming from.

[davewil1964]

I was directing it more at tt.

I find having reasonable security enabled easier than constantly changing/creating email addresses.

[tazzieterror]

My count is 80+ at the moment!

[tazzieterror]

I use a service called runbox.com to manage mine. It's essentially a single email account that can have multiple alias addresses associated with it - I just type in the new prefix I want and click ok - very easy. It's not like I'm going through a gmail signup process each time. Been doing it this way for a few years and to date have only had a handful I've needed or wanted to change.