Over the past two weeks I’ve started getting spam that was sent to various unique email addresses I had given to sites upon account registration. These sites include:
- ShowCrew Network
- Google Groups
- Knight News Challenge
- AirplayDirect.com
- AuctionAds.com (originally an Ebay Ad System, now fallen into the clutches of an educational scammer)
- washingtoncitypaper.com
While I don’t see any immediate connection between these companies, all of my registrations took place at last two years ago. I’d guess that either the spam-spiders have been making new efforts at leeching email addresses off of old websites, or all of these services were using some central system to manage their mailing lists and that system was compromised.