Spam email (again)

[woody1]

I don't think it's the platform that gets targeted for spam, its whatever list the spammer has and it's nothing to do with being hacked

In the past I've had spam where friends/contacts email accounts appeared to have been hacked. Everyone in their address books were getting spammed. This was with hotmail and btinternet.

[northernladuk]

Have you considered changing your email address? Maybe also switching to another mail platform that doesn't get spammed/hacked as often.

Yes, it's a pain but it might be worth it in the long run. When I did it, I set hotmail to forward everything to gmail. Thankfully, it didn't forward anything that it had filtered as spam.

No. As mentioned been with this one 30 odd years. This suggestion came up last time I was having issues. Started a gmail one up but just too complex to move my entire life from this one. It's more sign ups with everything than actual mail but a bit a spam isn't enough to turn the whole thing over.

I don't think it's the platform that gets targeted for spam, its whatever list the spammer has and it's nothing to do with being hacked

[woody1]

Have you considered changing your email address? Maybe also switching to another mail platform that doesn't get spammed/hacked as often.

Yes, it's a pain but it might be worth it in the long run. When I did it, I set hotmail to forward everything to gmail. Thankfully, it didn't forward anything that it had filtered as spam.

[northernladuk]

When signing up for things, apart from using an account that isn't my primary one, the other thing I do is add the initials of the company to my name, e.g. here might be Mr FoxHatCUK
Then if I receive spam and it begins "Dear Mr FoxHatCUK" then I know where they got that address from.

That's a clever idea, I might have a go at that. Won't be too hard to keep track of them all using with a password manager. Only thing is 99% of it comes through with the prefix of the email not my proper name. Most appear to just have an email list and no other information.

Wish I'd thought of that before with the BT issue. I'm 100% something has been leaked because of the unique password appearing on darkweb lists. I dropped them a line about it but got told no data leaks from them.

[WTFH]

When signing up for things, apart from using an account that isn't my primary one, the other thing I do is add the initials of the company to my name, e.g. here might be Mr FoxHatCUK
Then if I receive spam and it begins "Dear Mr FoxHatCUK" then I know where they got that address from.

[woody1]

When I was on hotmail, used to get tons of it. Not so much, since switching to gmail. And as you say, it tends to come in spates.

My missus has a 2nd email address that she uses for anything she can't 99% trust. She signed up for some prize draw once, and was really glad she didn't use her main email.

I sometimes use temporary email addresses like temp-mail to sign up on forums etc.

[northernladuk]

Which email do you use? I'm on gmail, and I can't recall any spam for a long time not being redirected to the spam folder. I'm always vigilant for anything suss.

My internet providers offering. Had the same one since I came off AOL so what, 30 years and I use it heavily. I've got 11 data breaches on Have I been Pwnd and I'll bet everything I have that's the tip of the iceberg. A few of my passwords have been found on the darkweb passwords lists over the years despite being numbers letters caps and special characters, one of them I swear I only use for BT got found but no news of a data breach from them. All in all it's hardly surprising I attract quite a bit of spam but it ebbs and flows. The Mcafee, Norton subsciption one is pretty constant throughout but occassionaly I'll start getting a raft of a certain type which will then drop off. This one is particularly annoying due to the Norton Pop up. Kind made me smile to see they've gone back to packages in clickable files. Very 1990's that is.

[woody1]

Which email do you use? I'm on gmail, and I can't recall any spam for a long time not being redirected to the spam folder. I'm always vigilant for anything suss.

[northernladuk]

So, in the past couple of weeks I've started recieving spam emails that start with different type of hearts pictures and some text around starting a conversation. Here is one of the subjects - 💖💚Hi there, Thought it might be nice to talk to someone new today.

Probably four or five a day. It also kicks of a Norton Virus warning due to a PDF attachement giving me a PDF:ScamX-gen Trj popup from Norton. File is quarantined and most mails go to spam.

The only annoying thing is having to click off the massive quarantine popup from Norton. I can't put a rule on as the hearts are different ones and the text is subtly different everytime. Only about 2 in 30 are dublicates. Problem is though even if I got a rule up to move to deleted the mail still hits my account and Norton would popup even if the rule then deleted the mail yes? It doesn't delete it before it's delivered right? Is there anything I can do beyond a mail rule. I've spent an evening diligently reporting them all to norton and marking as Spam in the hope someone will start catching them before delivery or something.

The other option is to turn off Norton checking email I guess. I don't open daft files so don't think thats an issue.

Any other thoughts to make these less of an annoyance or is it another case of welcome to the internet world and wait till it sorts itself out?