I’m very careful with privacy and security so I was surprised I got an obvious phishing email from “American Express”. I reported the email and moved on only to get another one today. I checked haveibeenpwned and it came back clear. I have never gotten a phishing email before the other day. As for the senders, they all came from generic IT sounding email addresses. They obviously weren’t American Express.
It can happen in many ways. If you’ve ever used your mail for anything, then the address is out there.
Just the other day I got an email addressed to 50+ people with every email in the “to” field. Ironically the mail was about online security…
Obviously it’s a breach on GDPR, but the damage is already done. If just one of the other recipients has been hacked or has forwarded to someone who is or has allowed some dodgy app to syncronize contracts, the scamners now has all the emails.
There’s absolutely nothing I could have done to prevent it.
This just makes me think being online sucks like 50% of the time. I try to tell people to be careful online and not give up personal data when it can be avoided. People are so willing to give up everything for convenience sake. I complain about data collection and shitty tech companies and I’m called a paranoid schizo. Then again, I did everything right and still got fucked. Welcome to the internet. Sorry if this came off as negative. I don’t know what else to say.