Josef 'Jeff' Sipek20h ago

Interesting... tonight I received an email about something called "Q5 Worldwide Ham Radio" to the email address that I only use for #POTA. I'd love to know how these people got their hands on it. Why do #hamradio orgs find it so difficult not to share people's info?

Edit: I emailed W1DED and until recently he's been accepting list of suggested subscribers assuming that people agreed to it. He seems genuinely dismayed and is trying to improve subscription controls to avoid generating spam. 👍

Show threadThom W8TAM (US-MI)
@jeffpc Kevin is doing a lot of work for us. I wouldn't assume it was abuse. What was the content of the email?
May 20 at 2:01amWeb
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek20h ago

@w8tam A substack spam with the web version at https://q5hamradio.substack.com/p/the-teacher-behind-the-pileups

This seems completely separate from official POTA business.

The Teacher Behind the Pileups

Why Mark Pride K1RX’s Hall of Fame Induction Matters to All of Amateur Radio

Q5 Worldwide Ham Radio
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek20h ago
@w8tam The email indicates that I am subscribed to this (again, using an email address that I only ever used for POTA), which suggests that someone took POTA user email addresses and imported them into Q5's substack.
Show threadThom W8TAM (US-MI)20h ago
@jeffpc Interesting. Are you 100% sure you didn't sign up for it? Kevin doesn't have any admin privileges on our app. He can't see email addresses.
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek20h ago
@w8tam 100% sure. Had I signed up I would have either used my generic email address or a separate q5-only address.
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek20h ago
@w8tam (I use separate email addresses as much as I can specifically to catch abuse like this.)
Show threadThom W8TAM (US-MI)20h ago
@jeffpc I don't know if you use the gravatar for POTA, but it's possible to reverse engineer it to harvest email addresses. We'll likely make a different choice in the future version. I still wouldn't expect that to get signed up for something automatically.
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek8h ago
@w8tam I don't use gravatar - well, POTA website does something to fetch possible gravatar images (but I just have the random but stable "no user image" icon).
Show threadozeng20h ago
@jeffpc @w8tam wildcard crew, high 5! 👋
Show threadThom W8TAM (US-MI)20h ago
@jeffpc I don't know what to tell you. I'd say you should contact Kevin and chat with him about it. I know I had to specifically sign up to his substack, so it's weird that you got automatically signed up.
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek8h ago
@w8tam Thanks for the suggestion. I emailed him today - using my non-angry tone, of course. :) We'll see what he has to say.
Show threadJosef 'Jeff' Sipek7h ago

@w8tam I updated the original post I made.

Kevin IMO screwed up but he's owning it and trying to improve things. So, as far as Kevin & Q5 is concerned, I'm reasonably happy with how this went.

It still doesn't explain how POTA "leaked" my address. I should probably change it, and see if it leaks again :D