[SOLVED] Bitcointalk sending unsolicited e-mails (spam)?

[crypto_curious]

Hello all,

Recently I've signed up for Firefox Relay paid service, which allows me to create unlimited amount of e-mail addresses on mozmail.com domain. So I can use one address per website.
So I've changed my e-mail on bitcointalk account to ***@mozmail.com. No other website has this e-mail, its unique to bitcointalk. My e-mail address has never been public, it's hidden in my profile, I've never given it away to anyone or published it anywhere. I only use it to login to my bitcointalk account.

Today, to my great surprise, I've received two spam e-mail to this inbox.
Subject: WhiteList & Benefits (Wallet Searcher Team)
From: "whitelist@walletsearcher.pro [via Relay]" <replies@relay.firefox.com>

Wallet Searcher Corp
WALLET SEARCHER - MINING 3.0 RELEASE
We present you an Unique Software that combines:
           - POWER: working through cloud servers
           - INTELLIGENCE: 3 completely innovative algorithmic system
           - SIMPLICITY: convenience limit, the minimum entry threshold
           - VARIABILITY: 4 types of different blockchains, from BTC to BNB

Thanks to your active participation in the projects of our Partners, You were  be included in the WHITELIST of Wallet Searcher Software!

(...)

SPECIAL BENEFITS
Since you are a member of WL, you take:
0.5 BNB to your Wallet Searcher Account, 12 hours of testing our SW, with a full Bitcoin blockchain search version!
Alternate text
WL Activation for YOU "***"
To activate WL, as well as learn about WL, you need to go to the Telegram Group, and write to the Administrator  that we gave you above.
Detailed information(FAQ) you can find in our Bot or in Telegram group.
You are Welcome!
 👇
 JOIN NOW
"Everything complicated is actually simple, a successful life is closer than you think. Sometimes you just need to try!"
Telegram   E-Mail   Web Site
Wallet Searcher Corp © 2022

Some commercial offer - definitely spam, I've never heard of it and I don't intend to click on these links, and I did not allow my e-mail client to download images from their HTML e-mail. Their tracking won't tell them that I've interacted with this e-mail.

Can someone explain what is going on?

EDITED this part - if was my fault! My e-mail address has not been set to hidden to the public. I've checked, non logged in viewers cannot see it, but any logged in used could have grabbed my e-mail address and paste it to their bot, and that's what happened!
Thank you guys!

[1714892195]

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[NeuroticFish]

Can someone explain what is going on?

I wrote a long text with possible options, then I saw the problem: you forgot to set in your profile the e-mail address stay private. So everybody can see your e-mail address in your profile. Anybody could have sent that spam.
Next time make sure "Hide email address from public?" is checked.

[jackg]

Go here to change your privacy settings (it's near the top): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;sa=account

Everyone can see your email address at the moment. You might also want to make a new one if you care about security, not being spammed and privacy.

[rat03gopoh]

Does it contain a crypto-related premium name, like bitcoin@mozmail or something? I know there are several bulk email name generator software , and that's what some email database sellers use for advertising services.

[Little Mouse]

OP, this is very unlikely to happen in bitcointalk. I doubt theymos would ever sell the email addresses database. That would be ridiculous. Unless the forum database got hacked, I'm sure that theymos will never sell them to any service. You would be glad to know that theymos recently even stopped on forum ads too. Forum has more than enough funds to survive for a long time unless BTC price gets dropped significantly.

If bitcointalk staff are reading this, be honourable and don't delete this message - don't ban my account trying to hide it

Theymos practices "freedom of speech " as much as possible. You won't be banned, man.

Does it contain a crypto-related premium name, like bitcoin@mozmail or something? I know there are several bulk email name generator software , and that's what some email database sellers use for advertising services.

Have you read what NeuroticFish said? It's because Op has shared their email publicly while thinking that they had hidden the email address.

[Lucius]

A typical beginner's mistake I would say at first glance, but someone who registered on the forum 7 years ago should know at least some basics in terms of how to use the forum. Fortunately, the OP has a way to create unlimited e-mails, so the fix for his problem is more than simple (I hope)

[AB de Royse777]

I wrote a long text with possible options, then I saw the problem: you forgot to set in your profile the e-mail address stay private. So everybody can see your e-mail address in your profile. Anybody could have sent that spam.
Next time make sure "Hide email address from public?" is checked.

I was reading OP and wondering what's going on. I was even thinking possible ways to get the emails like having the DB hacked or bots are scrapping emails or there are such email generators which work automatically and generates email address. Most of the times they get invalid emails though. Success rate is too low. And then I read this response before checking the profile LOL

It's still public :-P

OP go here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=547217;sa=account
Look for "Hide email address from public?"
And mark it active then press the "Change profile" button. You will need to enter your password before updating by the way.

Update

Go here to change your privacy settings (it's near the top): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;sa=account

I didn't know it was working without uID too. :-D

[dkbit98]

Can someone explain what is going on?

NeuroticFish is right, you exposed your email publicly in your forum profile and maybe some other places, so it was easy for someone to scrap it and send you email spam.
I suggest closing and deleting this relay email address, than you should create new one that is hidden in your profile settings, and not exposed in public.
Go to your profile and select option Account Related Settings, than check option Hide email address from public? like shown in image below.
Now you won't have any issues with email spam.



PS
I wouldn't fully trust Firefox relay or any other similar centralized services like that, but there is other alternatives like AnonAddy or SimpleLogin.

[crypto_curious]

Can someone explain what is going on?

I wrote a long text with possible options, then I saw the problem: you forgot to set in your profile the e-mail address stay private. So everybody can see your e-mail address in your profile. Anybody could have sent that spam.
Next time make sure "Hide email address from public?" is checked.

That's it, bingo!!!! Thanks, I can rely on you guys as always. I've checked from private session of the browser, and my e-mail was hidden so I didn't dig deeper. But indeed, option to hide e-mail address has not been checked in my profile, so passive viewers can't see my e-mail, but logged-in users can! So someone has copied my e-mail by hand, or harvested if from my profile and now spam comes.
Thanks everyone who replied with help  

Go here to change your privacy settings (it's near the top): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;sa=account

Everyone can see your email address at the moment. You might also want to make a new one if you care about security, not being spammed and privacy.

Exactly, that's what I am going do to, time to generate a new alias