Did registering expose all my contacts to ad's?

OCuain

When registering for Boards.ie is it possible that I unwittingly exposed all of my 'mail' contacts to advertising? But a short period of time after registering to Boards.ie an advertisement was sent from my computer to all of my contacts. I became aware of this by the very large number of "delivery failures" returned to my inbox; some of the contacts more than twelve years old and no longer in use.
My "sent" mail revealed the majority of my contacts having received ad's for "additional money at home etc." Not only is this a source of great embarrassment to me but it reveals to others the names of my contact list.
Can Boards.ie guarantee me that in registering and activating the site that there is not hidden, or otherwise, a 'link or 'action' that would allow for this very serious breach of ones privacy.

xsiborg

i'd imagine these are your msn contacts? this would merely be a coincidence as boards is one way e-mail notification traffic only, directly to your inbox.

you should however report your account to microsoft as being compromised because what has happened is spammers are using your address and your contacts list to send spam, nothing to do with boards, and happens to the best of us.

you are quite safe using boards.

Boards.ie: Danny

OCuain wrote: »

Can Boards.ie guarantee me that in registering and activating the site that there is not hidden, or otherwise, a 'link or 'action' that would allow for this very serious breach of ones privacy.

Yes, we can.

The mails we send to you are plain text, there is no way to hide anything via a hidden link, action or image and it's also why they look like they're from the 1990s. These mails are automatically generated, there is no room for human error.

You need to look elsewhere for the cause of this problem, any relation to an email sent by Boards.ie around the time of your intrusion is entirely coincidental. I would suggest contacting your email provider.

Danny

OCuain

I accept fully your explaination in respect of mails to me etc. In twelve years of computing and using the "web" nothing quite like this has ever happened before, and I do have very good protection installed.
It was the timing of this occurance that directed my attention to Boards.ie and thought perhaps that there might be something in the "personal data" page which included "security" lettering and below this the printing of a word without the commas which seemed unusual at the time.
I only raise this in the off-chance that your members "register" system might possibly be compromised.
I accept fully your assurance that this is not the case as there would be no difficulty in having it checked out.