Everyone in this thread suggesting a “data leak” or “compromise” is totally missing the fact that this is how Apollo works. This is often times overlooked by Apollo customers themselves. You have to opt out of customer data sharing (and in doing so lose out on the value of the product): https://knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/20727684184589...

Not commenting on whether this is good or ethical (or even totally legal), but this is what is happening behind the scenes.

For a little more color for people unfamiliar with modern sales/marketing:

1. A user signs up to BrowserStack

2. BrowserStack (automatically) upload the submitted user’s information to Apollo

3. Apollo “enrich” the user’s details using information they already have about the person, e.g: company revenue, LinkedIn profile

4. Sales reps at BrowserStack use the enriched information to identify leads, bucket for marketing etc.

Apollo’s customer data sharing adds any information BrowserStack send to Apollo to the person’s profile with Apollo, accessible to all Apollo customers.

For example, any other Apollo customer can search something like “email addresses for decision makers at Example, Inc.” and get back a list including your email address (if you told BrowserStack you are a decision maker at Example, Inc.)

Every single marketing team is doing all of this, the only reason it was obvious in this case is that the OP used a unique email address for BrowserStack. If you sign up for any business product online, you surely have a profile in Apollo filled with details about you gathered from around the web (and details you submitted).

edit: https://www.apollo.io/privacy-policy/remove opt out link but Apollo are just one of many companies offering this service

So I'm not disputing this, but I set up a similar scheme to the author almost 8 years ago and conduct 90+% of my online business through the custom emails. Everything from Amazon to small local business.

In that time I have had 'leaks' twice: my State's Fish and Wildlife licensing organ, and GitHub. In both cases I assume it's more that the email ends up being public, not because of something like Apollo.

I guess it's possible that spam is getting filtered before it ever hits my inbox.