Any decent free anti-spyware available? I am still getting loads of unwanted mails.

blue_monkey_2

Hi,

I posted a few days back about all these emails coming through to my address - they still are!!

I downloaded a free Anti-Spyware program ([something]zilla it was called), ran the scan and it said it had found 6 items (one of which was a worm, the others were Adware) and to be able to 'deal' with them I needed to 'upgrade' to their full package - for a fee of course!!

So I took that off and then downloaded Spyware Terminator, I've run a full scan and it's not picked up anything now ao wither this one is rubbish or the other one has some sort of unscrupulous means to make you pay for something you don't need!!

Now, I keep the laptop open on the sofa so it is feasable the kids have clicked on a pop up or a banner and something is on the PC, they don't usually touch it but of course, there will always be the off time when you let them play on something that they will do it as they are only 3 and 5, but is there anything I can do about it and how do I 'clean' it? I have opened a Google account as well so if I cannot clean this and stop the emails then I will have my emails routed from Orange via Google and then bring them into OE from there. I don't think OE has anyway to deal with spam emails, does it? I also have my firewalls on and I have AVG that scans every day.

Is there anything else I could/should be doing? They've only started in the last few weeks, the other thing is that I had my auto-response on while away on holiday so maybe something was returned and it's entered my email address somewhere.

Any more advice on what I can do would be great thanks as it is just getting ridiculous, I have over 400 of them yesterday - and that is just the ones getting through the filters, I get another 300 or picked up in the filter on Orange - and that is daily!!

davetrousers

I think you are confusing Spam and Adware/Malware. There isn't much you can do to stop people spamming you, you have to be careful to whom you give your email address and where you use it.

albertross_2

The spam is probably unrelated to anything on your pc (could be on a friends though), so further antispyware scanning is unlikely to help.

Once your email address is compromised or spammed, there is little you can do other than filter it. A lot of ISP's do this for you, not sure about Orange

Be careful who you give your email address to. It is generally a good idea to have one for friends etc, one for signing up to things, one for shopping.

blue_monkey_2

I have an email address that is [EMAIL="....@xxxxx.fsnet.co.uk"]....@xxxxx.fsnet.co.uk[/EMAIL] and we can have as many prefixes as possible to the @xxxxx.fsnet.co.uk and most of them coming are to addresses I have never ever heard of and are addresses to names I have certainly never used so how can they get my address from this? I only have 2 that I use, one for eBay Business (yes, some do come to this address but very few) and one that I use personally and none of them are ever addresses to that name, it is always other names, so how can they get my address if I have never used it or given it? A few days ago someone asked if I had spyware or something, that is why I tried to see if anything was running on m PC.

albertross_2

A computer can use every combination of addresses in existence very quickly (this is even easier in your case, if they know the xxxx bit), so it is probably just random.

Use gmail or yahoo for ebay etc, then if one of the people who you buy/sell with gets infected with a spam trojan, you can just throw the address away.

Reggie_Rebel

Mailwasher is a good Spam Filter. You can cover one account on the free version, but the pro isn't that expensive.

http://www.mailwasher.net/

blue_monkey_2

OK, thanks, it is just so confusing as I try to be really careful even though I use it for business. In regard to the mailwasher, is this going to work as I seem to have been 'given' thousands of addresses so it'll oly pick them up on the one right, and I am not getting many to that address that is the problem. If I enter my email address the others will stll come through. Urgh, what a headache. Maybe it is time for a change of provider. Is that hard?

shammyjack

Last freeware version of Mailwasher to support multiple accounts can dowloaded from

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page2.html


shammy

blue_monkey_2

Many thanks for the links for Mailwasher. I am using it now and it seems to be working - albeit slowly!! We are starting to get less. Thanks ever so much for recomending it.

molerat

I have just checked my fsmail account and have 822 spam mails sitting in the junk folder from the past 10 days. In the same period i have had about 10 delivered to my inbox in IE. I have my IE accounts set up to receive mail to [EMAIL="s@mydomain.myisp.co.uk"]myname(s)@mydomain.myisp.co.uk[/EMAIL]. The default is [EMAIL="anyname@mydomain.myisp.co.uk"]anyname@mydomain.myisp.co.uk[/EMAIL]. Strangely I don't get any in my hotmail account.