TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Information: Does Suddenlink sell its customers' email addresses?
► Summary:
Privacy issue answering whether Suddenlink would ever sell its customers' email addresses.
► Content
Suddenlink Communications does not, nor will it ever, "sell", or otherwise distribute customer email
addresses to other parties. Customer email address information can be obtained in a number of ways,
including:
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Supplying your email address on an Internet site that asks for it. Some sites may place you on a
mailing list and distribute your email address to other sites.
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When signing up for a free Internet mail account with another company, some may require your
Suddenlink email address when signing up. This information can be sent to advertising agencies
to help cover their operations costs, or the company offering the free email account may
require that you receive advertisements from other sites to use the service.
Any site asking that you provide your personal email address, or other information, could potentially
contribute to this issue. Always reference the site's security and privacy disclosures prior to providing
any personal information. In most cases, you will be able to tell when a site or service is reputable and
concerned with its customers' privacy.
There are also methods not so ethical in which others may obtain email addresses for the purpose of
sending spam messages. Below is a Question and Answer from Suddenlink High Speed Internet which
addresses the Spam issue, and notes steps taken to protect Suddenlink subscribers.
How did someone get a list of Suddenlink email addresses?
There are companies that are solely dedicated to acquiring e-mail addresses and spamming the
addressees. They try, for example, 3 million possible @Suddenlink.net email addresses to compile a list
of the addresses that they determine to be valid, based on "undeliverable" responses. They take the
addresses that appear to go through and then attempt to send out a spam email to their self-compiled
list. This is quite common and can impact any ISP.
How does Suddenlink High Speed Internet combat this?
Suddenlink High Speed Internet has staff and software dedicated to searching outgoing and incoming
emails to see if they match a spamming profile. Those that are tagged as spammers are flagged and
thereafter are unable to send large-batch emails.
So how do people still receive spam emails?
We may identify an email as spam in the middle of a batch that is being sent. Therefore, we will keep
the remainder of the batch from being sent but we can't do anything about the ones that already have
been sent (for security reasons, we won't take emails, spam or otherwise, out of a customer's in box).
Are there security issues involved?
No, since the spamming company is not obtaining names, profiles or passwords from our system. Any
attempt to break into the system is immediately detected and stopped by our operations team.
Suddenlink High Speed Internet and its partners take this issue very seriously and make every effort to
protect our customers from unsolicited e-mail. To report an offender, send a complaint to
abuse@Suddenlink.net.
► Applies To
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Email security and personal information
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Configure email software
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Suddenlink High Speed Internet Service
