I’m more shocked that there were 57 million accounts for Hot Topic. People. Stop giving your information to companies that have nothing to do with your personal data.
The optimist in me would like to think that a significant portion of them would be ‘dead’ emails, as kids would have used cringey addresses like xX_sephir0th_Xx@hotmail.com (I know I did! 😅); but honestly - given how pervasively online Gen Z/A are (and relatively tech illiterate), they’re probably almost all valid addresses.
I’m more shocked that there were 57 million accounts for Hot Topic. People. Stop giving your information to companies that have nothing to do with your personal data.
I mean, if they’re burner email addresses, fake names etc. provided to take advantage of promotions - then it really doesn’t matter.
If anything, it’s a good thing to salt the dataset to make it less valuable to would-be ne’er-do-wells.
I agree wholeheartedly, but how many on that list do you think are actually burners, and how many are kids?
The optimist in me would like to think that a significant portion of them would be ‘dead’ emails, as kids would have used cringey addresses like xX_sephir0th_Xx@hotmail.com (I know I did! 😅); but honestly - given how pervasively online Gen Z/A are (and relatively tech illiterate), they’re probably almost all valid addresses.