Spam - Aladdins Gold - giving away my email address?

[deltoid]

I've emailed the casino in question (Aladdins Gold) but I'm curious has anyone else gotten the following spam advertising httpxx jackpotters dot com / skyfire dot com and winbigcasino .ssr. be .

The reason I ask is when I sign up to a casino, I create a unique email specifically for that casino. No one else gets it, and it doesn't get used anywhere. (In fact whenever I put my email in for anything, the site gets its own email address. For those of you curious how I can do this, I have my own domain and a catch all email address.) I did this for Aladdins Gold, and recently I received 3-4 pieces of spam to that email, apparently completely unrelated to Aladdins Gold. Now, spam on the internet isn't new. But spammers only hit email addresses that they have. How did these spammers get that email?

So the question is - was my personal information sold or compromised at Aladdins Gold? Those are the only two options..! That or Aladdins Gold spams their players for other websites..!

[spearmaster]

When was the last time you scanned your computer for viruses/trojans?

[deltoid]

Daily.

That and I don't install or run things unless downloaded from a reputable website (my gaming PC actually is only used for casinos). This is the first and only email that I've set up for casinos that is getting spam on it.

[vegetagirl2008]

I didn't read the thread in its entirety..

[spearmaster]

Daily.

That and I don't install or run things unless downloaded from a reputable website (my gaming PC actually is only used for casinos). This is the first and only email that I've set up for casinos that is getting spam on it.

Interesting.

I don't think CWC in the habit of spamming though, I would certainly be surprised to learn otherwise.

The most likely thing is that one of their office computers is compromised by a virus or trojan, or else someone clicks on what appears to be a MSN message... with a link which takes you to a trojan-loaded page.

Perhaps you can PM the CWC reps (Tom and/or Martyn) and let them know?

[vinylweatherman]

To validate this rather interesting, and potentially damning, result, you need to set up a control. Set up an email address, but give it to NO-ONE. Then send yourself an email or two from it, and reply to yourself. This simulates you and the casino corresponding. If you DONT get spam to this control address after this, then you could rule out malware on your PC monitoring your use of email & passing addresses to spammers.

The more times you do this, and get results showing spam to the address given to casinos, and none to the control, the better a case you have for casinos being careless with our email addresses.

The problem may well be the use of third party bulk mailing agents by casinos, rather than handling this in-house. There is no guarantee that these third parties ring-fence email addresses garnered from client specific contracts from other clients. They may even be using these email addresses to build a top quality list of known email addresses of internet casino players, which would be pretty valuable. If they did this, and realised this value, they could then get contracts from casinos by bidding lower than if they were not getting value from the lists, enabling them to beat more ethically responsible agents to the deals.

CWC use Communicator Corporation as their bulk mailing agent, and this can be seen as "c-f-1.com" when you hover over links in their promotional offers, This means Communicator Corporation have been given player's email addresses in order to send out the promos. I also get SPAM that uses "c-f-1.com" for hosting the content, so Communicator Corporation, when approached by a spammer, will accept the contract, when they should be refusing it, since the spammer should be unable to provide them with proof of permission to send the content to the email addresses involved.
I have also had an email BLOCKED by a recipient, and part of the "score" was because Communicator Corporation's c-f-1.com hosting domain was BLACKLISTED due to it hosting spam.

[deltoid]

Thanks for the comments guys, but to be clear - my pc's are not infected. I'm quite strict with what software goes on, and the virus scanners are up to date and run daily. I also have an extensive background in computers and software, so I'm quite sure about this.

If I were infected, then my other email addresses would also be compromised - this is not the case. The problem is unique to Aladdin's Gold. I have yet to get a response from the manager on here, or my email to support.

[vinylweatherman]

Thanks for the comments guys, but to be clear - my pc's are not infected. I'm quite strict with what software goes on, and the virus scanners are up to date and run daily. I also have an extensive background in computers and software, so I'm quite sure about this.

If I were infected, then my other email addresses would also be compromised - this is not the case. The problem is unique to Aladdin's Gold. I have yet to get a response from the manager on here, or my email to support.

Compelling case, since it seems you already have a control of sorts, this being your other email addresses NOT getting spammed, as would surely be the case if there were a security breach at your end.

To make things even clearer, set up yet another email address, and tell Aladin's Gold support that you now have a new one, and ask them to update their records. If the spam moves over to this new address in the same way it started when you gave them the original, then you have evidence of a causal relationship between giving your email addresses to Aladin's Gold, and these spammers getting hold of it.