Your personal data is pretty valuable to companies, especially because many of them mine and sell it. Utilise the middle name field to find out which companies have sold your personal information.
Photo by startupstockphotos.com
If you want to see who’s selling your data, one Redditor suggests a clever way to do just that:
When you sign up for anything online, put the website’s name as your middle name. That way when you receive spam/advert emails, you will know who sold your info.
This doesn’t exactly prevent your info from being sold, but it does tell you which site did the deed so you can warn others and stay away from them in the future. For more detail, head to the link below.
Comments
4 responses to “Use The Middle Name Field To Track Websites That Sell Your Info”
Most spam emails don’t provide your middle name.
One of the benefits of owning a domain is the “catch-all” email account. So I can sign up using “[email protected]” and see who else spams emails to that account.
A friend of mine did this sort of thing 30+ years ago by giving charities, etc. his name as John A/B/C/etc Public (not his real name…) and keeping a log of who got told each different middle initial.
Now, what action you take when you learn your info’s been sold is another matter entirely…
or you can use Gmail’s feature, eg. [email protected]
has worked a treat for me
The spammers have worked around that. Having your own domain name is great way to figure out who is screwing you.. Except eBay/PayPal who disclose your email to everyone.