I have spam in my inbox sent to astahost.<myspamgourmetaccountname>@spamgourmet.com. Only astahost got this address, and it's not likely some chinese spammers guessed it either. Nor do I post it on any posts, nor is it viewable on my profile here on the site.

Was there a user db compromise or is someone selling email addresses?

I have had an email address on gamma for 6 months. I have received zero spam there. I would infer from that, that there is definitely not a deliberate policy of harvesting email addresses.

That's why I'm wondering if there was a compromise to the user db...I've only gotten about 2 per week or so of them. My hosting account went inactive (I moved to hostgator)...maybe there's a policy to sell off addresses to people who don't post in so many days...

I don't think there is or ever was any problem with AstaHost giving out email accounts. I have been in-active for 20 days in a row before and I hadn't noticed an increase in spam emails. You say you have an email from: spamgourmet.com? This is not a large email provider (such as Yahoo, Gmail, MSN est.) there is a possibility that (despite the website's name) they gave your email account to people. There may be a user database lookup (or social network) attached that you are not aware of and people get email accounts from that. I know that seems a little far out, but I have been using AstaHost for over a year and it isn't the type of website to give away email accounts. Unless of course you set up an email forwarder on your AstaHost account in which case you should be able to disable from the Cpanel.

Hope this helps you narrow down how your account is getting spam,
Sparkx

I agree with sparkx, I have been here for a lot of years and the email's I'm using on CPanel or here with Astahost, I don't get any SPAM on it, where are sites where I use different email and I get lots of SPAM there For some emails, my all inbox is just getting SPAM and none good emails, I don't know why I still keep it, maybe because I'm using it since 2002..

AstaHost does NOT sell email information nor has there been a database compromise. Your email address is listed in your application for free web hosting. Email harvesters have little difficulty collecting emails without any protection which is probably why you use a junk mail account for your account here!

Admins use the email address you supply in the application to determine if the correct account is being activated for hosting when we approve applications. I designed the hosting application form and hope to add a measure of security to the email address during my next update.

Thank you,
vujsa

Astahost is a very reliable company and hosting providor and I doubt they sold your address. It's possible that those spammers are using a system that runs through every possible address and sends when possible. Astahost wouldn't sell your email address. And I don't think there was a database compromise either. The SQL errors were probably due to IPB breaking down. It happened on a forum I visited for a long time.

Thank you for the official confirmation on that. I didn't mean to sound accusatory, I was just bringing the situation to the staff's attention.

Hey maybe you posted it by accident, or maybe it is your browser. You could have been using one of the many web viewers, local mail application, 3rd party access(forwarding)? Probably you, if you were using your account -- being logged in -- in one of your browser tabs, and you were surfing in another tab. Maybe some clever servers scripts was checking on you're active internet activity. Or say for example your email is setup to automatically preview email or show images on from the spamming site to verify your email. Maybe it's something similar to Microsoft registerd members/technet email, where it all kinds of things happen in the background. Well these are my ideas, but maybe it's just something new, another overlooked security flaw on your end. Content filtering, packet analyzer, online traffic statics or some else upstream from your Internet connection, then again, maybe it's out of your hands. Well good luck finding the culprit and let us know.

Hey there. I am also a SpamGourmet user. I agree totally with vujsa in that your email address was probably compromised when it was posted asking for hosting. There are many many ways email can get leaked. Live publishing like those request forms is on the high risk list for sure.

But then, as a fellow SpamGourmet user, you should know the drill... now that you are hosted, ditch the targeted email that you used for here, and reset your personal settings with a new one. End of problem.