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Steffen Ullrich
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TL;DR: there is no clear answer what happened here. Only wild speculation based on how such things can happen.

GPS data are not intrinsically linked to email addresses. For an attacker to get your GPS information and link it to your email address they need to have done some kind of compromise first, like compromising your phone. In this case it might also be that they have access to your mail on the phone and can act based on the content of the mail. Or they might have access to your mail by compromising your mail account at the provider. Or the passport office was compromised ... There are far to many options how this could happen in a targeted way.

And then there is the option of just being a coincidence, i.e. that you wonder why you got the mail which fits your situation while ignoring all the other spam mails which don't fit your situation. Such biased view might be amplified by some self-learning spam filter which automatically adjustadjusts to your current communication and what kind of mails you expect and thus areshould be less likelytreated as potential spam.

TL;DR: there is no clear answer what happened here. Only wild speculation based on how such things can happen.

GPS data are not intrinsically linked to email addresses. For an attacker to get your GPS information they need to have done some kind of compromise first, like compromising your phone. In this case it might also be that they have access to your mail. Or they might have access to your mail by compromising your mail account. Or the passport office was compromised ... There are far to many options how this could happen in a targeted way.

And then there is the option of just being a coincidence, i.e. that you wonder why you got the mail which fits your situation while ignoring all the other spam mails which don't fit your situation. Such biased view might be amplified by some self-learning spam filter which automatically adjust to your current communication and what kind of mails you expect and thus are less likely spam.

TL;DR: there is no clear answer what happened here. Only wild speculation based on how such things can happen.

GPS data are not intrinsically linked to email addresses. For an attacker to get your GPS information and link it to your email address they need to have done some kind of compromise first, like compromising your phone. In this case it might also be that they have access to your mail on the phone and can act based on the content of the mail. Or they might have access to your mail by compromising your mail account at the provider. Or the passport office was compromised ... There are far to many options how this could happen in a targeted way.

And then there is the option of just being a coincidence, i.e. that you wonder why you got the mail which fits your situation while ignoring all the other spam mails which don't fit your situation. Such biased view might be amplified by some self-learning spam filter which automatically adjusts to your current communication and what kind of mails you expect and thus should be less treated as potential spam.

Source Link
Steffen Ullrich
  • 207.5k
  • 30
  • 416
  • 481

TL;DR: there is no clear answer what happened here. Only wild speculation based on how such things can happen.

GPS data are not intrinsically linked to email addresses. For an attacker to get your GPS information they need to have done some kind of compromise first, like compromising your phone. In this case it might also be that they have access to your mail. Or they might have access to your mail by compromising your mail account. Or the passport office was compromised ... There are far to many options how this could happen in a targeted way.

And then there is the option of just being a coincidence, i.e. that you wonder why you got the mail which fits your situation while ignoring all the other spam mails which don't fit your situation. Such biased view might be amplified by some self-learning spam filter which automatically adjust to your current communication and what kind of mails you expect and thus are less likely spam.