Hi guys,
I can assure you that the emails submitted to the WELT competition haven't been passed on to ANY third party, nor will they be. In fact, we haven't even emailed the entries (yet) ourselves. The only contact you will have is one email when the competition has closed, and then (only if you opted to receive them) future WELT newsletters.
WELT (and PGi) are part of a large publishing house, with well over 40 magazines selling hundreds of thousands of magazines a month, we take our data standards very seriously - it's not two college kids in a dormroom. I will ask the internet guys to look into any evidence of server compromise or whatever the clever stuff is I don't know about, but we certainly aren't in the business of selling emails to spammers.
I must stress that we haven't, and won't ever, pass on any email addresses or other details unless specifically authorised to do so (such as the option to sign up for the Planet newsletter).
Thanks