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.
Doesn’t matter how careful you are if the people close yo you with that information aren’t.
‘Why yes ofcourse you can access my address book in order for me to play candy crush.’
If you have signed up on dubious websites with questionable privacy policy, many of them legally sell this data to “data brokers” who then sell it to anyone willing to pay. This happens more than you’d think, for example in 2019 it was reported California DMV makes $50 million a year selling users information. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a32035408/dmv-selling-driver-data/
One neat trick is to signup for services with an email like name+website@domain.com, that way if you ever get spam you’ll know where you have been compromised.
When I sign up somewhere, I often use
my.emailaddress+service@gmail.com
And then occasionally spam comes into my mailbox “hi person, you singed up for spam service” send to my.emailaddress+spotify@gmail.com
and well, now I know who sold it
also also, type your email into haveibeenpwnd.com to find if it’s leaked somewhere
