Simons Mall Free WiFi Killed my Gmail Account

It was early in the morning as I walked the perimeter of the mall to avoid the remnants of the tropical storm that rolled through the north east this week. As usual I connected to the free WiFi graciously provided by Simons Mall, but there was one subtle difference. The log in screen had changed requesting my name and email address or cell phone number. Not quite awake I entered my actual email address and connected, completely unaware that I had just unleashed Lovecraftian horrors out of Pandora’s Box.

The spam emails began rolling in yesterday afternoon and continued into this morning. I suspect the spam will only grow over the next few weeks making my gmail account completely unusable as an information conduit. It turns out there’s a small box that is checked by default just off the bottom of the mobile web WiFi sign up page that says “yes please spam me with bull shit offers for the rest of my life”. I never saw the checked box, and I foolishly entered my true email address. Thank you Simons Mall for killing my gmail account.

For comparison I should share that my email address is on public web pages in several locations, and yet I’ve never received anything resembling the deluge of junk email as I have over the past 24 hours. Black hat advertising is malicious, irrelevant, and disgusting.

Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t ever, EVER enter your email address into any web form unless you absolutely trust the company not to sell off your information for a few cents.

update
The spam mails have subsided, perhaps Google has identified the bulk of them and kindly forwarded them to /dev/null on my behalf.

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  • http://www.startupboyo.com/ RichardF

    I have had a yahoo email address for years that I use regularly for occasions when I’m unsure how a company or person is going to use my email address.  I check it regularly but nothing of importance goes in there.

  • http://www.renjack.com Terence Reilly

    Damn them!

    I will have to pay attention, we have a few Simons Malls out here as well. I usually don’t go to them, but when I do I will be sure to protect my gmail!

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Good man, I have yahoo and hotmail accounts which I use for similar purposes. The morning fog prevented their timely application.

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    I can always count on you Terence to share my nerd rage. Thanks friend :D

  • http://twitter.com/emerigent/lists/memberships Emeri Gent [Em]

    Mark this topic is too good to resist for me to merely sit on the sidelines :-)  

    There are three things I can say about spammers – that first it is their day job, second think of the song and third spam as tweets.

    First,let us think of spam as “their day job”…
    Seems obvious to me, that the reason you may have overlooked the check box (put it simply) maybe a Freudian slip.  It is either that because spammers must still have a life after they have finished cashing their pennies of spam, that when they want to retire for the evening to an intelligent places, it probably would be a place somewhere, such as your blog.  We can at least grant them that benefit, even if they don’t really benefit any of us.  That however is purely a psychic explanation :-)

    Second, remember that spam is also a classic song>
    Monty Python’s song reminds us that spam has always accompanied the very stuff we dig into.  Next time you see a whole wad of spam, think of this particular sketch below – for it might take the edge off something that otherwise is a daily nuisance. IMHO it is always good to reframe things into something completely different.  Of course, Monty Python were the supreme experts in “and now for something completely different” … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8huXkSaL7o

    Third, another reframe is spam as tweets, or even poetry…
    We all know what spam is and we should go to greater lengths to try to see less of it, but whatever we do get to see, can also be transformed into objects that we take for granted but which we don’t think of spam.  Spam can be, for instance, be considered as really awful tweets. Spam can also be considered, in another way, as the worst kind of Vogon poetry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxPeIiU2kx4

    Conclusion
    Of course, there is always my tweets, the latest set which accompanies you-tube video’s that are usually laced with advertisements…  

    Nickelback “If Today Was Your Last Day”

    Fantasy is the soapy suds, pragmatism is the water to wash it all off.

    Phil Collins “Another Day in Paradise”

    Work colleagues wish for Friday while I bless the very breath I take…

    Neil Diamond “I am…I Said”

    Identity isn’t a rating, it is a price, which we either sell or we get sold for.

    Linkin Park “Somewhere I Belong”

    Belonging is that somewhere I have placed myself between the womb & the tomb.

    Ultimately, I personally think in more immediate terms, for if the spammers led to either a brief or even longer term return to the Victus Spiritus by the one they call “Mark Essel”, then all I can say, is bless them ol’spammers, oh, bless em’ indeed :-)

    [Em]
    “emeri gent” @thoughtspaces:twitter