Spam phishing emails

RedPen

I've been getting a dozen emails a day pretending to be reputable companies eg Boot, B&Q, Screwfix.
I block every email but the same ones keep coming back with a different sender email. Usually a a string of what I think are underscores (___________) then a long string of numbers.
I've got a outlook/hotmail account and always "report" and block the email. I've also tried blocking these emails, by creating rules, but I don't know what I'm doing and it's not working. For example an error message comes up when I ask it to block emails with "____". I have also tried googling how to stop these emails and I've only found other frustrated people like myself.
I really recent knowing I will waste many minutes a day just deleting phishing emails. I'm rather upset about this.

libra10

I am interested in this discussion as receiving the same scamming emails.

I also report and block the Hotmail ones, but like yourself find that they keep coming, with different strings of numbers.  With GMail, most scamming emails are directed to the scam filter, and not too bothered about those.

I use Thunderbird to read emails, interested to see whether anyone can offer any ideas.

Robin9

One day Outlook/Hotmail will sort their filters but in the meantime you are wasting your own time is retting filter rules.

I had the same issue with AOL  and they eventually got their end sorted and I get very few now.

Just delete the individual ones.

km1500

block.emails containing screwfix, boots, b&q  etc

RedPen

km1500 said:

block.emails containing screwfix, boots, b&q  etc

I did think of that, thank you, but those are shops I go to and might get a digital receipt from for example.

debitcardmayhem

the emails should all have an address of ______@something.xxxx. block that 

PRAISETHESUN

I've also noticed an uptick of spam SMS and emails in the last few weeks. It's probably just a Xmas spam season thing to be honest. Most of them get flagged as spam, but more than usual are getting through to my inbox lately.

You can increase the strength of your spam filter at the risk of some legitimate emails getting blocked. Personally I find that just blocking the emails one by one as they come through does most of the job, but I agree that it's annoying!

Saver73

I seem to have more spam emails than usual recently, from the same companies as the OP and I wondered if it was seasonal but fortunately gmail captures most of them in the spam folder, I check/delete once a week. I've had more spam calls too recently. Answered by mistake earlier when I was waiting for a call back and it was something about a funeral plan, so I hung up.

km1500

RedPen said:

km1500 said:

block.emails containing screwfix, boots, b&q  etc

I did think of that, thank you, but those are shops I go to and might get a digital receipt from for example.

one option is to create a separate email.account for reciepts going forward

Barnibonn

Just don't open such emails. Normal emails have an unsubscribe line so that you don't receive repeated emails

booneruk

Barnibonn said:

Normal emails have an unsubscribe line so that you don't receive repeated emails

I'd be very careful before trusting an unsubscribe link. Spam emails can use them, and clicking them will signal to the spammers that you are likely to open spam emails and click links in them!

I feel spam is best handled by training whatever spam filtering you have in place. You're always going to get spam, there's no stopping it but a good spam filter will work wonders.