email address spammed before used

[#1]

I just applied to join Plusnet broadband, and of course the initial setup of an email address occurs automatically. When a day or so later, I got around to checking my new account, I was stunned to find that as well as the emails from plusnet admin welcoming me, advising me of this and that (as you will all know), there was ALSO a spam message already about 'Learning Cas1no Games at home'.
I am less than impressed that spam appears to leak into email accounts from within PlusNet itself......

[#2]

No.
Spammers just generate zillions of email addresses and if it lands, it sticks.

[#3]

May be worth asking Plusnet that the account name you have used is not one that have been used in the past. You are not probably aware that Plusnet database was hacked into sometime ago and email addresses were passed to spammers. So you may have selected an account name that was used at this time but have since been closed.
I very much doubt that you received a random a spam email so soon after opening an account.

[#4]

Ah, I didn't know that.
Whatever the reason, it's worth configuring the anti-spam settings in your email account to suit you.

[#5]

It's very unlikely that spammers make up random domain names, the part after the @. They of cause could monitor DNS entries to spot new entries, which would happen when the OP account was enabled for accountname.plus.com but I also think this is unlikely.
I have 3 domains set with MX records completely under my control and only 1 of them receives spam as the email address was used in Webmail so it got passed to the spammers when PN database was hacked into.

[#6]

Quote from: HPsauce

Ah, I didn't know that.

It has actually happened twice!

[#7]

Might be worth checking you have "catch-all" turned off in your Manage My Mail -- unless you actually want this feature....

[#8]

Well at least, if it's an address you haven't used, you can blackhole it and adopt another prefix (although a pity if your username has been compromised already  )

[#9]

Quote from: itsme

May be worth asking Plusnet that the account name you have used is not one that have been used in the past.

I'm fairly certain that this isn't possible.

[#10]

Quote from: Jameseh

I'm fairly certain that this isn't possible.

It's not. Once a username has been used, even if the account is cancelled you will be unable to re-sign up for that username.
We can re-activate the username if you were the original account holder, but this didn't happen in this case.

[#11]

If I were GB I would be really, really disappointed. When I changed to a domain name I had spam instantly but this was because it had been used before. After identifying the part before the @ sign I was able to blackhole these and it solved the problem.
This clearly isn't the case here.  I know that the spam filter/settings have improved but couldn't GB be offered a change of username as an option? I know that PN don't like to go down this road but it does seem to be a special case.

[#12]

Quote from: PJ

I am not aware of the second event that Santiago refers to.

The second event was the webmail breach May 2007.
The previous security incident I was refering to was July 2006

Force 9 sent an email (in error) to 1,800 customers containing information relating to Force9 customer details.
The information sent was; Internal reference number, username, name, product name, subscription amount, Force9 email, alternative email, marketing preference and active status.