ISPs giving your address to spammers

[Synthetic]

Just wandering if anyone has experienced similar.

I used to use LineOne and was very happy with them. I was always very careful with my address, and received no spam. That was until tiscali took LineOne over, then suddenly I was awash witl the damned stuff. A number of the spammers failed to use the 'BCC' box for the addressees, and lo and behold, they were all [email protected], and in close alphabetical order. What a giveaway. I contacted Tiscali, and they would not deny giving out our addresses, so I closed the account. Seems that spam is more important than customers:confused:

[BOAC]

Almost 100% sure that AOL did do/are doing the same.

Before Xmas last year my AOL address started getting hundreds of spams, AOL said it was because I used that address in chatrooms and forums, neither of which were so. It is purely an ISP for me.

Eventually I changed my contract with them to give me a new, completely random, address which is now getting spam again. Some from AOL addresses! I still NEVER have my AOL anywhere visble except to AOL. It can never be proven, of course, and they fervently deny it, but the odds against a random address getting so much spam are very high. They have NO explanation other than it must be MY fault for releasing the address. I have not. All the 'privacy' options are selected inside AOL too.