Huge increase in spam

maggiesoup1

In the past month or so I've had a ridiculous amount of email spam. I never click on anything so not worried about it infecting my laptop, hopefully. I've downloaded free Malware and done a full scan using Defender which came with the machine. Any ideas why I'm getting so much now and what I can do?
Thanks

John_Gray

About all you can do is to change your email address... Until this starts getting spammed!

AndyPix

What email service do you use ?
In many there is the option to "report spam" which will reduce the amount you get.


I use gmail, and theirs is pretty good, i dont get much spam these days (but there is loads if i look in the "spam" folder)

Teapot55

maggiesoup1 wrote: »

In the past month or so I've had a ridiculous amount of email spam. I never click on anything so not worried about it infecting my laptop, hopefully. I've downloaded free Malware and done a full scan using Defender which came with the machine. Any ideas why I'm getting so much now and what I can do?
Thanks

I have always thought that this problem comes from emails a person may have been sent in the past. What I mean by this is: you get a hilarious email with a silly joke or a funny picture from one of your friends. All fine so far.

At the top of the email you can see all the email addresses of all the people they have also sent the same email to. Probably still fine. It's all your friends and a few 'friends of friends'.

Somewhere down the line, if everyone then forwards the email to all their friends (and it is a very funny joke, so worth sending) and they also leave all the email addresses from the previous one on there, the new recipients have now got loads of email addresses. It is a bit like a chain letter. Somewhere down the line these email addresses end up in the wrong hands.

That's my theory, and I may be right on this, because a few weeks back my OH was getting loads of spam. I thought I would too, but I didn't.

This is how I think I might have cured it

• in the past if I have had 'dodgy' emails from friends who obviously haven't really sent them, I tell my email program to block future emails from them. Usually they are people I have lost touch with anyway like former work colleagues or if not we are still in touch anyway on social media so can still get messages from them if they need to contact me

This is how we can all protect ourselves and each other

• when you send an email to lots of people don't put their email addresses in the bit that says 'To', just put your own email address in there.
• Look for the bit that says 'Bcc' (you might have to click on 'Cc' first) and put them in there. (Bcc means 'blind copy'). This means everyone gets the email but they don't get to see all the other people who got it.

The above advice only applies to your emails at home. You should not be forwarding funny ha ha emails at work. And you should not be sending blind copies of emails. Down the line you will get into trouble. :eek:

forgotmyname

Get more email addresses. I use one for paypal another one for ebay, yet another for my bank, another for trusted forums and another for one off site registrations and another for sites i think are a high risk.

Probably 30 email addresses all in.

Receiving a lot of "Black Friday offers" Except its black Friday, or weekend or fortnight ot month or year... So many not so special offers.

Mr.Generous

getting loads myself for the last couple of moths, probably half a dozen per day - just that its the same "you have won £500 tesco / Aldi / someone else" vouchers every single day. I add to junk list daily, it dies off for a few days then back to previous level.

maggiesoup1

Thanks everyone, brilliant advice, as ever

Heedtheadvice

If it becomes very annoying Mailwasher is a good programming that you can ore run before opening you email programme. It is independent of your email programme and has blacklists, delete and report facilities and will open emails in short text versions only so you can read the start of content without any significant risk.

I used it for a while before changing email address.
I seem to get those indiscriminate ones and from 'contacts' that have iPhones. Currently one every couple of days so just deem to be spam or just delete.