I signed up to Javagaming with a unique email address that has never been used for anything else. I selected the option to keep it hidden from other users. This week I started getting spam to this address. So either Javagaming are spammers, or Javagaming sold the address to spammers, or Javagaming’s database has been hacked.
It’s definitely not the first two, which unfortunately leaves the third option 
Have you received any legitimate email from JGO (such as thread notifications?)
Cas 
Is your address “random”. So my gmail address is my name. Spambots can guess the name easily so I don’t need to have my email addresses sold/stolen/hacked.
So i am suggesting a 4th option here… And the 5th is that the people you signed up with email got hacked/sold/stolen…
I think that’s the best guess .
I have never signed up my company mail for anything, but once in a while I receive some e mails trying to convince me that my penis is small.
I think it’s just a trial and error bot which had the luck to find your e mail address .
What type of spam was it… In last few days I have recieved 3 spam emails (Subject “Hi C”, “Hi N”, “Hi C”… selling Electronic Products), never had spam in last 5 years in this email (I put this down to Facebook which was recently hacked I think but if your spam is similar to mine then maybe the third option although unlikely IMO!).
it’s the exact same spam steveyO is getting.
the chances of the address being guessed randomly are several million to one, and the chance of steveyO and me getting the same spam makes that billions to one I’d say.
yes i get thread notifications.
I own the whole domain. If it was a trial and error bot it would have had to try quite a few other addresses at the domain before it hit this one. But it didn’t.
First don’t underestimate just how nonrandom names and email address are. 2nd spambot are pumping millions of email every hour. The last one we found was in the US and had 4, 2Gbit lines that where saturated. 1 in a billion is something that happens daily.
3rd I have got the same email and so has my wife, but my work email is easy to guess and my wife gmail is similar. The stats are than 90% of spam come from a small group of spammers or something like that. About 95% of the mail i get is spam, but almost all of that gets correctly filtered.
But yes your email providers could have given out email address or could have been hacked, which i think is more likely than jgo. Simply because an email provider is a bigger target for hackers… and bribes… jgo is not really the center of the internet… 
The email provider doesn’t have the address. No-one had the address except for Javagaming.
It really doesn’t make any difference to me whether you believe me. I can just block the address. But it seems quite likely Javagaming has been hacked. In my experience when one of my unique addresses from an online shop begins getting spam, usually my credit card number is cloned at the same time, because the online shop has been hacked. Javagaming don’t have my credit card number so it’s not really a problem for me, but my point is these hackers are connected to all sorts of criminals so it’s quite possible they could start using Javagaming’s server to host child porn or something. And whoever runs Javagaming might wish to prevent this.
[quote]…quite possible they could start using Javagaming’s server to host child porn or something.
[/quote]
Oh please, and let me guess they have ties to Al Qaeda…
Complaining that you get spam in email isn’t really going to give you any results.
My email address is registered with my account on JGO and I don’t receive any spam.
So, either ChrisM must have sold just your email address, the hacking spammers have only selected your email address to send spam to, or JGO is not involved.
Which is more likely?
hmm. the description (Subject “Hi C”, “Hi N”, “Hi C”… selling Electronic Products)
fits some spam I’ve been getting as well… It is going into the Spam folder, but this does suggest a pattern.
Really almost impossible to say what the source of the problem is without some heavy Linux guru stuffs I guess…
For a fact I know that my server is being scraped by script kiddies daily. Had a RedHat guy in to make some
adjustments and improve my security. Using heavy passwords even on cvs now…
My wife and work mates are not on jgo. So no i don’t think its suggests a pattern outside mass spamming…
and your wife and workmates are getting the same spam? if so I guess can forget the issue…
one more note, the spammer had ‘javapool’ in the ‘from’ area i think… so there is some java thing as a common denominator?
again, I don’t think we are trying to blame anybody here, we are just charting the situation.
It is not outside of the realm of possibility… On the other hand it’s a good point that they would probably spam the
whole user list automatically, but again on another hand that would make it too obvious… I don’t know…
I too have a registration email address unique to JGO and I’ve never received any spam at that address… at least, not yet! Surely if the DB had been hacked we’d all be flooded with spam by now?
I’ve also been getting Hi Q, Hi P, etc. subject lines, but I get probably 25 spam emails per day at this address, so that’s not unusual. I don’t appear to get anything Java related, although I am getting a lot of video game related (and iPhone related) spam. Of course, the volume of those is nothing compared to penis/drug spam…
man, how do you guys get spammed so much. I NEVER get spam, on any of my emails.
and I think that delt0r has a point. It isnt that crazy to have a 1 in a billion chance succeeded when you have that much resources put into it. All it takes is a billion tries 
I can confirm that the site has not been hacked, and we don’t sell the mailing list to anyone. EVER. In fact, we have only ever done bulk e-mails to the community a handful of times in the 9 years we have been here. We don’t collect credit card information, no facility to do so. As for the site being hijacked to host illicit materials, that is not the case either.
It depends on what you do with your email address. I have two email accounts - one is for work and more important endeavors, and the other is for everything else (including JGO). Every time I try out a little online game, every time I sign up for some forum, etc. I use this email address. And I’ve had it for years and years (basically since GMail came out), so I’m sure it’s been sold a number of times without my knowledge. It only takes one douchy admin to make your email forever in trouble. It may not even take that much - a spam bot can go to your own website and find email addresses, unless you do tricky things like put your email in a script or an image.