Why it’s hard to trace with one address
If you’ve used the same email address for years, it sits in hundreds of databases. When a message arrives from a company you’ve never heard of, there’s no way to tell which of those hundreds passed it on.
The reliable method: one alias per site
Give each website or service its own alias. Every message then arrives addressed to the alias you gave that particular company. If mail from an unrelated sender arrives at your shopping alias for one store, you know that store, or someone it shared data with, is the source.
It also tells you when an old account has been breached: spam to an alias you only gave one company is a strong signal.
Plus addressing helps, a little
Adding a tag to your address for each site, where your provider supports it, can work the same way. The weakness is that anyone holding the address can see the tag and remove it, so careful spammers strip it out. A separate alias can’t be reverse-engineered into your real address.
Reading message headers
Every email includes headers that show the route it took. Your mail app usually lets you view them with an option like “show original”. Headers can reveal the sending service and the address the message was actually delivered to, which helps when you suspect a particular mailing platform. They rarely tell you which company sold your address, but they can confirm whether a message genuinely came from where it claims.
Ask the company directly
In many places, including the EU and UK under GDPR and several US states, you have the right to ask a company what personal data it holds about you, where it got it, and who it has shared it with. If a company you never signed up with is emailing you, a data access request can reveal its source. You can also ask it to delete your data and stop contacting you.
What to do once you know
- Stop the alias that leaked. The spam stops immediately.
- Give the company a new alias if you still need the account, or close the account if you don’t.
- Report the sender as spam so your provider learns.
Hskky Plus gives you up to 10 aliases with custom names, enough to separate your main shops, services and subscriptions. Compare plans.