Alleged leak of more than 5M Gmail accounts

Re:Alleged leak of more than 5M Gmail accounts by marksamman on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @06:28AM (#8295860)

If you search for the character '+' in the list of e-mails you can get an idea where the mails leaked from. It seems to me like this is a collection of databases scraped from different sources as others have suggested.

For Gmail users, it's a good practice to register to websites using [email protected] (e.g. [email protected]), that way you'll know who leaked your data when it appears in lists like this or when you get spam. Gmail ignores the plus character and anything that follows the plus. You can also add dots at arbitrary positions in the username part.

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Re:Alleged leak of more than 5M Gmail accounts by unbelievr on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @07:48AM (#8296081)

Going with your suggestion, the amount of DBs must be huge. The most prominent additions after the + sign (ignoring just single numbers) are:

- Bioware (54)

- Bravenet (19)

- Bryce/daz3d/daz (244)

- Eharmony (64)

- Filedropper/fd/etc. (113)

- Freebie/Freebiejeebies (64)

- Friendster (65)

- Hon (42)

- Policeauctions (28)

- Savage/Savage2 (116)

- Xtube/porn (200ish)

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Re:Alleged leak of more than 5M Gmail accounts by archenemy on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @10:06AM (#8296585)

I have always wondered what use is this with regards to spam and sneaky address lists. What exactly prevents someone from cleaning up the addresses before letting them out?

If I were a bad behaved site and sell (sold? sorry, tired and non native speaker) my userlist, i'd probably remove all plus-suffixes from the addresses. Same as if I were a blackhat stealing them to be sold.

Honest question, no snark.

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Re:Alleged leak of more than 5M Gmail accounts by netrus on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @09:26AM (#8296415)

On the other hand, this will reveal to anyone you have a HN/NRA/porn account in case of a leak ;)

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