The most frustrating part, I left hoping to never cross or interact with them again only to find that I was still being screwed over by those two timing, back stabbing bastards!

I have now started receiving the usual tpe of spam in addition to the “Stock tips”, so what I believe is happening, is an employee with access to account info is periodically selling the addresses to spammers. Some spammers are willing to pay up to $5 per valid address. Just imagine how much money that person is making by selling account email addresses.

I plan on moving all my assets to another company as soon as I find one that looks like it will meet my criteria. I suggest everyone do the same.

This can NOT be explained by a random email address spammer because I have a catch-all account that would receive ALL variations sent to my domain name. But I do not get random variations. This stock spam specifically targets the address I gave to TD Ameritrade, and only TD Ameritrade.

Also, the last time I changed my email address, I created three variations (*_TD1*, *_TD2*, and *_TD3*). I gave one to TD, and the other two were control (i.e. I did not give them to anybody). And guess what? The one I gave to TD is getting stock spam, and the other two are not.

I don’t know how else you can explain this other than private email addresses are leaking out of TD Ameritrade. And I am furious.

It has been about six months and today I received my first “stock tip” spam message to that special email account. 4/12/2007

One of two things is happening. An employee with access to the email accounts info is selling the addresses to make some extra money *or* TDAmeritrade management is selling the addresses with the intent to trigger foolhardy account holders into making stock trades, thereby increasing TDAmeritrade’s profits.

I contacted TDAmeritrade the first time it happened and was given the run around.

I now have the proof needed to show that something strange is happening at TDAmeritrade. I am going to send copies of all the documentation I accumulated to ABC, NBC, and CBS. Hopefully one of them will run with the story.

If you have similar documentation, do the same. The more letters and complaints the network news departments receive, the more likely they will investigate. I know. I used to work at NBC.

It appears Ameritrade lost a data backup tape of customer information before the TD merger:
http://www.billkatz.com/node/77

1) A hacker got in and stole email addresses (and who knows what else) from their servers.
2) Someone inside the company sold the addresses without corporate permission.
3) An employee’s laptop with customer data got stolen.
4) Ameritrade might have been using 3rd party companies to deal with customer relations for example, and that 3rd party leaked the addresses.
5) Someone was sniffing on the wire somewhere near ameritrade routers and got a ton of addresses via unencrypted email (I somehow doubt this was the problem, otherwise Ameritrade probably would have discontinued unencrypted email transmissions as part of their service, and would have required communications to be conducted via a message center on an encrypted webpage).

I’m surprised this hasn’t reached the papers, with all the stuff I see on the web about it.

Allie

As others have noted, I too give custome email addresses to EVERYONE I have an online account with in the form [AcctCompany].[MyDomain].com.

I give offenders one chance to remedy the problem where I receive spam to that address, then promptly close accounts and cease doing business with them if it happens again. If their attitude is particularly shitty, or they don’t seem terribly concerned, I close the account on the first incident.

You’d be amazed how many companies truly don’t care when you close the account and try to give them the reason. Oh well.

Out of curiousity today, I searched for “Ameritrade spam” and found that it has happened in epidemic proportions.

I definitely don’t feel that this is a company I’d like to continue doing business with and will closing my accounts in short order.

Jason