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online reviews - paul 1963

Gents, A little word of warning, I recently purchased some car cleaning products from a well known motoring shop that is only taking online "click and collect" orders at present ( Avant I wasn't sure of forum naming and shaming policy). A few days later I received a email inviting me to review my purchases, As I was more than happy with the products I decided to go ahead.....big mistake! I'm now getting at least 3 emails a day from dating websites some of which are quite explicit, I very rarely give out my email address so it can only be them that have sold on my details.

online reviews - Trilogy.

That's livened up lock down for you!

online reviews - alan1302

Very, very unlikely they will have passed on your details - more than likely just a coincidence.

online reviews - Avant

They presumably have a 'contact us' facility which you can use to ask them if they have sold on your address. You can't be certain (it might even have been leaked by your Email provider), but if they admit that they have passed it on, come back and tell us who they are.

Given the amount of spam Email one gets, addresses are unfortunately in wider circulation than we think or want.

Edited by Avant on 15/05/2020 at 09:29

online reviews - Trilogy.

The most surprising aspect is you've been reading the emails to see the content. Anything I don't want I ignore/delete.

online reviews - alan1302

And add to your Spam filter.

online reviews - Engineer Andy

Sometimes the review sites (separate from the firms that sold you the items) are US owned and thus will often (and sometimes in breach of our/previously EU privacy laws) have automatic opt-in privacy/communications settings, whereby you have to contact them to opt out of having your personal data used - inlcuding sold on to God-knows-who 3rd parties via data mining firms.

Even using some UK firms, they can breach the privacy rules (the insurance screenscrapers have been nototrious for this) and so I always check before even contemplating buying whether they do this or what you have to do to stop your information being 'mined'.

Of course, there have been instances of well-known retailers (PC World/Currys) and others (including Mircrosoft!) being hacked and customer's details (to varying degrees) being sold to criminals and spammers.

If the OP doesn't purchase much online and the problems (especially if they've never had any before and no other 'new' things happened of late [a new person on your email list may have been hacked]), then it is worth searching to see if that firm has had security issues and also contacting them/logging on to find out what are their privacy settings/rules for them.

Sounds to me that it could be more than a coincidence.