If you want to know if and prevent a company from selling your email address, there are a few things you can do. We’ll show you what!
How to tell if a company is selling your email address
Have you ever registered for a website and received emails from companies you’ve never heard of? If so, chances are the company sold your information and email address.
This unwanted spam is definitely annoying, but you don’t have to worry. We’ll show you how to stay one step ahead of spam and untrustworthy websites. It’s a trick for Gmail, but it also works with Outlook and other services.
How to find the culprit
You may not know it, but your personal Gmail address has many variations. By simply adding a “+” and a word or number before “@gmail.com” to your own email address, you can change your address. Any emails sent to this variation will still arrive in your mailbox. This method makes it very easy to find out which company sold your email address.
When you sign up for a website, add a “+” and the name of the website to your original Gmail address. So instead of “dennis@gmail.com” you would choose “dennis+company1@gmail.com.” You will continue to receive all emails from that company in your mailbox, but you will also be able to see exactly who the company has given your email address to.
If you have registered with ‘Company1’ and shortly after receive spam emails from company 2, company 3 and company 4, which you are not registered with, then you can easily identify the culprit. Open one of these spam emails and you will see your email address listed under ‘To’. If it says ‘dennis+company1@gmail.com’, then you know for sure that this company has sold your email address. You can fix this by unsubscribing and deleting the spam messages from your inbox.
Selling data is not prohibited
Companies are allowed to sell certain data under strict conditions. Trading email addresses is especially popular. In general, you consciously or unconsciously agree to your data being passed on to third parties by agreeing to the privacy policy. Something that most people do not read at all.
How to prevent a company from selling your email address
First of all, it is a good idea to create a separate email address for registering on websites. For example, a Gmail address. That is an email address that you do not use for anything else. And since you do not send any personal information via that email address, it is also less of a problem if this email address is sold.
You can also use the option ‘Hide my email address‘ enable. Apple will then create a new email address for you, so that you don’t have to use your own. All emails sent to this alternative email address will then arrive in your own inbox. For more information about this, read the article Why you should hide your email address – this is how it works on iPhone.
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