I am not sure what to make of what just happened to me. I am a 69 year old retired RN. I live in the new CA-47 district. The Democrat in the race is Alan Lowenthal and the Republican is Gary DeLong. Gary has been my city councilman for the last 6+ years. Alan represents the district next to mine. I have been registered as a Democrat since time immemorial.
For the past few years I have been cyberstalked by an employee I had terminated for inappropriate behavior in the workplace. I have an email account that I use for any accounts that I have, e.g. dKos, Amazon, etc. And, I have another email for use by my close friends and family only. I am extremely careful where I use that account and those who have it are well aware of my stalking problem. Since my retirement I no longer have a corporate email account. It was corporate security who found out who my stalker was. My stalker has not found (yet!) my family email account.
I have NEVER given my family email account to my city councilman, Gary DeLong. However, today I received an email from his city council office about some road paving in the district. And, then about an hour later I received an email from his campaign office decrying Alan Lowenthal's partisanship. Even Alan Lowenthal's campaign doesn't have my family email account!
Follow my tale of woe after the little orange curlicue:
I called the campaign office and got a very nice lady who couldn't answer my question as to where they had obtained my family email account. She asked me to wait for Gary to answer my question.
When he came on the line he apologized profusely for using my email account. He said that the campaign must have gotten it from the LA County Registrar's office. He looked it up and said that no, that wasn't it. The County Registrar doesn't have either of my email addresses. He then asked if I had given to his campaign. Nope. He then said that they have just changed over to a new system and asked my indulgence while he looked at the old system. The only thing that he could tell me was that I had signed up in July, 2011. I then reminded him that he wasn't running for anything then so where would I sign up? By this time he was becoming more and more flustered. I then asked how both his council office account and his campaign account had my private email address. He hurriedly informed me that they don't share email lists and it would be illegal to do so. He continued to apologize and said that he will look into it further and if he finds anything will call me back - forgetting to ask for my telephone number.
In the past I would have chalked it up to campaign foul ups. What has me a little spooked is my stalker is a rabid right wing Republican. How did they get my private email and who else can see it?
Am I being paranoid? Is my tinfoil hat too tight?