Every time I give my email address to a company I give them a unique one so that if I ever get spam because of them, I can know exactly who's responsible, and if necessary I can block that specific address without harming my ability to get mail from other people. (I have my own email server, but you can easily do this with Gmail... at least, until the spammers catch on and look for plus signs in email addresses.) As it turns out, I very rarely get spam from any companies that I've given my email address. I can only remember one company that has ever sold my address in more than half a decade: Uproar.com, a casual games site. That is, until the past few days.

I got spam from an address I've only ever given to S&K Menswear before. I ordered my coat from them nearly five years ago, and I just started getting spam to that address this month. That is some very stale spam. As it turns out, the company has gone bankrupt. Apparently a good way to make money when you go bankrupt is to sell your customer database.

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