Selling your Inbox Instead of Chocolates?

Qxz86 asks: "I, am an 8th grader at a Tennessee middle school, and on the 21st of February, I was asked to provide names and e-mails and/or street addresses to a company called Schoolmall. The company then distributes them among companies like AT&T and Toshiba. Needless to say, they then spam you legally on account of these solicitations. For every nine that I turn in my school gets $2.25. How do you feel about this?" SchoolMall, a virtual "shopping mall", allows students to purchase items from several large retail chains, and a portion of that purchase (depending on the vendor) goes back to the school. This sounds innocent enough, but I am definitely bothered by the insinuation that they are asking children for email addresses with which someone can Spam unsuspecting targets. Does anyone else have more information on this program?

Qxz86, my advice to you kid:

[Ayanami Rei]

Only do it if the email addresses you send to them are disposable. That means they aren't email addreses anyone uses for anything important. When you hit your friends up for one, don't use the main one. Ask them to register a new hotmail account and use THAT one.

It may be that SchoolMall is smarter than they sound and they will disallow just email addresses, especially if they come from hotmail or yahoo where they can be created easily. In that case, I will donate to you as many fake email addresses as you desire. And if I'm lucky, maybe you'll give me a receipt when SchoolMall makes the donation, so I can deduct it on my taxes, right? ^_^