[Radius]

Unless RIM's end user agreement states they are allowed to share or otherwise give out your email address, they won't sell it as that is against the law.

However, there is nothing stopping employees from harvesting email addresses from the servers and selling them on their own. It's illegal but happens all the time.

However I really doubt this has happened to you. Either you have chosen an email address that is very simple or it is similar to other emails existing in the system. The robots that spam will normally try to send email to an address and make slight modifications to it and keep trying. This allows for maximum coverage for the spam.

And considering these are very large botnets doing the spamming they can turn a single email into a million in no time. Most of the time emails are not harvested these days, it's just a blind guess by a PC. If you have ever seen one of these things doing what it does best you would understand right away.

[GlitchZero]

I used a live.com, hotmail.com, and live.ca, none have ever been spammed by the same content. I occassionally get invites to the University of Phoenix and your generic "My father is a prince in Nigeria" emails, but never all at once, and usually not more than a couple times a month on whatever given account.

[anon(19759)]

My guess is there was some kind of glitch on RIM's side that received the email once and pushed it to every registered email address on your BB. I'll bet if you had 10 email accounts set up on your BB that all 10 of them would have received the same spam message. Is it still happening? Create two or three new gmail, hotmail, whatevermail accounts and add to your berry and see if all accounts get the spam.

[sivan]

I would suspect the carrier first. They actually administer BIS and have all your email addresses. You can view all your email accounts on the carrier BIS admin page.

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[Radius]

I used a live.com, hotmail.com, and live.ca, none have ever been spammed by the same content. I occassionally get invites to the University of Phoenix and your generic "My father is a prince in Nigeria" emails, but never all at once, and usually not more than a couple times a month on whatever given account.

I don't think you understand just how these spammers work. As I say, it's probably just one single botnet with a million PC's hitting everything they can. And that's just one botnet.

I have many email accounts, some get the same spams while others get completely different ones. It all depends what botnet you are hooked into. And just because you are on a different server doesn't mean anything. These things will hit every email server they can find and have tens of millions of possible email addresses to try, maybe even more.

And it gets worse if you are using similar ID's for each email. So a [email protected] will very easily be hit along with your [email protected] or even [email protected], they will pick up these permeations almost instantly.

These days almost no one harvests exact email addresses anymore for mass mailings. The places that harvest emails are more for targeted bombings and don't usually use botnets.

[GlitchZero]

I wasn't suggesting that I'm an exception, nor that I understand the workings of spambots, merely answering OP's question 'is there anyone else using a live.com address'. All three of mine are a single character away from the same name, ie [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. (just examples, not actual addresses obviously) which I imagine would make them succeptable to similar attacks, but I've never had that problem.

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[berry.man]

I don't think RIM sells your email account to spammers.

I think it is more the likely the computer you registered the account and check emails with is compromised. Or a third party app that collects info (cough poynt cough).

Then again I find most ppl dun care about IT security. One of those things you take for granted until trouble hits you like spam, viruses, ID theft, etc. Its like how ppl argue against encrypted connections to mail servers, or using one time passwords to authenticate banking transactions

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[crazy canuck]

RIM has 30+ million email addresses and passwords in their database (yours, mine and every BIS users account). It is likely very tempting to sell them, whether they do or not is another question.

Alternately it is more likely a rogue RIM employee who put the 30+ million email addresses on a USB stick and walked out the door with them.

[berry.man]

What is up with crackhead conspiracy ppl making up or believing all these groundless and unsubstantiated innuendos ppl make.

Do you honestly think RIM will throw away their credibility and customers trust so they can sell your info to a few scammers for a few bucks.

Do you believe RIM has shares in pfizer because you are getting spam selling viagra? Seriously now

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[netsniper]

Ive had multiple email addresses on my BB and never noticed any "spam" that I would feel RIM is responsible for.

[grahamf]

I have a live account that i created for if I used MSN messenger, but now it's never used at all. It's registered to my blackberry and no spam

[cardu3851]

I have a live account that i created for if I used MSN messenger, but now it's never used at all. It's registered to my blackberry and no spam

Really? I stopped using my Hotmail account just because of that. I was getting 50-75 spam emails a month. And all at once. All of them were in form of "Delivery fail notification." So rather than actually receiving spam, my Hotmail account was used to SEND spam. And noting some of the email addresses used, they were very similar to each other with minor character changes and various email addresses.

Today I got 3 ads for BlackBerry handsets from the same spammer, on 3 different email accounts on my BB.

Maybe it was your carrier letting you know you're due for an upgrade??

[EnergyPlus]

Personally, I'd find it quite difficult to believe that RIM is selling email addresses, the carriers would revolt and RIM would lose ALL credibility. Also, I looked over their TOS and did not see anything (it was tedious, so I'm not claiming it's not there at all) referencing them informing users that this was their plan.

I have three email addresses that are assigned specifically to my BB. The first one, which I made by mistake, the second which was required by certain apps (i.e., Smart Guard) and the third, which I use for one client when we determined that his hotmail account, sent from his own BB, sometimes took forever to reach mine BB (it's a very time sensitive project), so he uses a BB email and they get their quickly. (Side note, I get ALL other emails sent to my domain on my GoDaddy account, instantly, he has been the only one I've had problems with, but hey, "the client is always right."

Now, I have never once, ever, ever, received ANY spam on the BB emails. None, zip, nada, zilch. So, my guess is, the OP probably had his email accounts farmed in some other fashion.

Another interesting side note. I do a lot of web stuff and I'm always having to register my email to open accounts. For sites that I never want to hear from, this is a royal pain. So, I created an AOL account (from my original AOL account that's over 14 years old) that has the word "spam" in the name. I have been giving that email out as my official email for years now and I receive about 4 spams a MONTH on it, it's hilarious! The downside is, that on two occasions, when I attempted to register for something and used that email address, it was marked "invalid email" and calls to tech support determined that their system did not like the word "spam" in my email, go figure!!! One of these accounts was with Barnes and Noble. Makes me laugh whenever I think about it.

It does seem like an experiment most of us could rather easily perform and report back with results. We could each set up 1-3 emails, add them to our blackberries, not use them, and see if we get spam. I probably have three I could set up (secondary addresses tied to my home cable).

One thing that does seem shady to me is that my primary home cable email address (the main one for the account) gets at least 3 spam emails a day. I don't even use that email address to write to anyone or receive emails. The other 5 secondary email addresses which are tied to that primary address/account (and which I do use all the time) never get spam.

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[rsarno]

just skimming, didn't read all replies yet

is it possible to post a screencap of the spam? If a ton of us have the exact same spam, that would further support your theory.

[SpaceLump]

I have three email addressess on my BB and none of them recieve any spam. Even my crackberry email that forward's to one of my BB email accounts doesn't get any spam. And I don't use any filters.

[jeff.parent]

Omg, my sides hurt from laughing so hard! I just love all the "nuts" out there that think there is a possibility of RIM selling your email accounts. Then again, I've seen people believe in even more crazy ideas. Just reading these crazy posts have made my day.

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[grahamf]

Omg, my sides hurt from laughing so hard! I just love all the "nuts" out there that think there is a possibility of RIM selling your email accounts. Then again, I've seen people believe in even more crazy ideas. Just reading these crazy posts have made my day.

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it's all dem conspiracy theorists.

Fortunately area 52 hasn't reached the major news networks yet.

[mohavewolfpup]

you do realize also the spammers could just do the old fashioned trick and use dictionary based attacks or other variants against domain names? Think of the spam bombs you get if you had a @hotmail.com and so forth address.

unless your email address is 13243563425231124235423!@$@#$!@#$!@$@#!$^&*(&*%^&% $#%$stupidlongemailaddy@!#@!%$^**_)(&**%^#$$@!#$@% $^%*%$&@#%^@!%@#$%^$&&**()__+__(&*(%^&%$@blackberr y.net (or whatever they use),

chances are they would find it easily if you used "[email protected]" or something similar and easy

[Pilot Prop]

This hasn't happened to me...I don't put it past any company to sell email addresses idc what they say

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[berry.man]

Companies may likely do data mining but its highly unlikely reputable companies with a lot on the line especially with regards to security and the corporate world, like RIM, will opt to sell your email to companies so they can send spam email to you.

The information that is gained from data mining by companies can be used to assist ads targetting you or most likely to help the company understand their customer better so they can market or create better products that sell better for the future.

This however does not mean RIM does data mining on their customers. However Google most certainly does for the purposes of marketting.

Furthermore, reputable companies that data mine don't sell your email info to others for the purposes of sending you spam, scams or viagra ads. It is thus extremely unlikely given the circumstances that RIM sells your email info to scammers and spammers. It it ludicrous. Little to gain if any directly from such actions, lots to lose.

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[F0nage]

Thanks guys for all the feedback. I didn't intend or expect this to be a contentious thread, unlike the iPhone threads so please just post if you have any spam you think might be related to RIM or Live.com coming through on your BB.

[rsarno]

chances are they would find it easily if you used "[email protected]" or something similar and easy

Common man do you have to post my email address all over the web???

[EnergyPlus]

I agree, though I'm seriously offended that you posted my private email address in a public forum. Now, I'm going to have to delete that one and change it to something like: (*&#$!&$()*3243563425231124235423!@$@#$!@#$!@$@#!$^&*(&*%^&%$ #%$stupidlongemailaddy@!#@!%$^**_)(&**%^#$$@!#$@%$ ^%*%$&@#%^@!%@#$%^$&&**()__+__(&*(%^&%$@blackberry .net

you do realize also the spammers could just do the old fashioned trick and use dictionary based attacks or other variants against domain names? Think of the spam bombs you get if you had a @hotmail.com and so forth address.

unless your email address is 13243563425231124235423!@$@#$!@#$!@$@#!$^&*(&*%^&% $#%$stupidlongemailaddy@!#@!%$^**_)(&**%^#$$@!#$@% $^%*%$&@#%^@!%@#$%^$&&**()__+__(&*(%^&%$@blackberr y.net (or whatever they use),

chances are they would find it easily if you used "[email protected]" or something similar and easy

[grahamf]

Can you use letters such as � or �?

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[Branta]

Can you use letters such as � or �?

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Until a few weeks ago I would have said "no" because they are illegal in an internet address. However the standards for DNS were changed recently to allow even non-latin characters such as Chinese and Arabic, and I have not read the new standard. It will of course be some time before the changes propagate through all the servers.