Your Email Privacy, Confidentiality and Security

There are many articles about password protection and two-factor authorization. But hackers still can get access to websites and change email passwords, therefore they are able to get big possibilities in cyber fraud.

But there are few who know or pay attention to that thing that emails could be used even without your knowledge, without getting access to emails and even without knowing passwords.

There are many types of spam and one of them is comment spam on websites, forums, etc.

To send this type of spam cyber criminals have their lists containing tens/hundreds of thousands of websites. They need to have email addresses to post spam. Acquiring of email addresses could be done with different ways — make up/generate non-existent email, purchase a list of real email, create a phishing website with a subscription field (that means any visitor who subscribed to the mailing list actually giving their email address to spammers).

Many sources sell different lists of emails so compiling a big list of hundreds of thousands of emails wouldn't be that hard to do. They do it because real email addresses raise more trust towards a spam comment rather than a made up one.

Therefore, you wouldn't even know that your email was used by spammers on any website for signups or for posting spam. Unfortunately, it's impossible to protect your email from such activity of cyber criminals. Any person who knows your email can write any comment on any website on behalf of you.

Also, your email can be attacked when a spammer has used your email on thousand websites subscribing to different mailing lists (sales, news, special offers, etc.). In this case thousands of confirmation letters could be emailed to you and later a lot of other letter will be sent to you every day. Besides, until you unsubscribe or set up your filters, your inbox will be overwhelmed  with such letters and functionality of your email will be paralyzed. Primarily these types of attack are made towards corporate company emails.

How to Protect Your Email Address From Unwanted Usage

Create several email addresses for different purposes and do not use your work or personal email for subscriptions on websites.

If you have your work email or your personal email then use them communicating only with trustworthy people and companies. Do not publish them openly, do not subscribe and sign up on websites and do not answer on suspicious mail nor click suspicious links. Thus, you will make really hard to use your email addresses by spammers as they do not see them.

Create the second email just for the purpose of public activity, signups, website comments, subscriptions and so on. Do not put your personal data anywhere making it impossible for anyone to compromise you and do not use it for the important events such as private or business communication.

The third email could be used for payment systems so use it for financial operations.
You must not use it anywhere else, open letters from the payment systems only or letters of your confirmed orders as even opening a letter could tell spammers that the letter was opened and your email address exists. And if spammers sent their letters to the randomly generated email list then you wouldn't give them information of your email existence. If you stick to these rules then no one will ever know about your email.

Use several email addresses for different purposes. You will protect your personal data and will not give any opportunities to compromise you.