I got an email, seemingly from Baron and ET, pushing a penny stock. Kinda makes me wonder if somebody was able to breach ET's database and the email addresses of the posters, because I don't suppose Baron would send such emails. It was signed by: Eric Dickson Editor, Breakaway Stocks
It's likely that you have enabled "Allow users to send email" and your email was sent that way. Also masking an email address souce is not that difficult; however most email providers can detect when this has occured.
I received the exact same email this morning... It says From: baron@elitetrader.com This sure is bothersome...
I have gotten email from Baron before. I think what happens is that a vendor pays Baron X amount of dollars to send all ET members an email selling a product. The last time ET displayed stats there was over 100,000 ET members, so the vendor can target 100,000 potential traders who might be interested. Say Baron charges $0.10 each, that's an easy $10,000.
Too lazy to look it up, but weren't we promised that our personal info (including emails) not to be sold or something? By the way it is ironic that you can not post about pennystocks, but we can be spammed about them...
Your personal information wasn't sold, Baron sent the email. It's called running a business. Things aren't free.
If the email was sent using the board software (which it probably was) then your info was not comprimised. The vendor used Baron, et al, to send you this info. If you prefer to not receive such emails in the future, you can adjust these settings in your user control section to stop these kind of email solicitations.
The best way to ensure that you don't receive future emails is simply to click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of that last email I sent.