r/LifeProTips • u/mightymedeler • 2h ago
Computers LPT - Find out which company is selling / giving away your personal data online
I learnt this today and was quite impressed to say the least.
If you want to find out which company is selling your information, whenever you sign up to something or make a quote online with your email, when typing in your email address, add a + after your email name and then a random word such as ‘+gym’ if signing up for a gym membership or ‘+carquote’ when making an insurance quote.
Example -
jackcc123@hotmail.com -> jackcc123+gym@hotmail.com
When you do this, the confirmation email will still show up in your inbox with the +gym.
Whichever company is selling your data, you’ll know where the leak came from because when you click the To:- on the spam email it will show up as jackcc123+amazon@hotmail.com and you’ll know that Amazon is selling you’re data.
To keep track of all the different places you use your email to sign up, each +tag will have to be unique.
Works for all the email domains, send a test email to yourself to try it out.
✌🏻