creepy emails

toomanykids

Hi, does anyone know if its poss for me to receive emails in my junk mail that aren't addressed to me? I've received a couple of these of the past couple of days and they are sent to email addresses slightly similar to mine. Mine is ie [EMAIL="xxxxxxxx@hotmail.co.uk"]xxxxxxxx@hotmail.co.uk[/EMAIL] and these have been addressed to [EMAIL="xxxxyyy@gmail.com"]xxxxyyy@gmail.com[/EMAIL] and [EMAIL="xxxxzzzz@yahoo.com"]xxxxzzzz@yahoo.com[/EMAIL]. The start of the address is the same as mine but that's where it ends. I don't have a yahoo or gmail account. The latest one was 18+ rated!!!!!!!!!!

What should I do next?

superscaper

Just delete them. They will be addressed to you, but you're just seeing only one of the addresses it was sent to. If you looked at the headers it'd definitely have your address in them.

TonyLisaP

you are probably in the CC list or been blind CC'd

toomanykids

Thanks for those. Just goes to show that you can have all the security you think you need in place but someone still gets through with messages about being a "squirter"!!!!!!!!!!! Takes allsorts I suppose! Just have to hope I get to them before any of the kids do! Thanks again!!

TonyLisaP

Well the junk mail folder is doing its job, can you not setup the junk mail folder to auto delete or are you worried that you might miss genuine emails?

darkfibre

As a general rule, if you get emails like that do not open them. They are sent out in masses, without knowledge if the account is active or not. By opening it it can report back to the sender that your account is still in use and even sell it on.

globalds

You could try this
http://www.mailwasher.net/
It is a spam filter .The basic package is free.
I used it for a while .I haven't bothered since the kids now have there own PC's I just use Outlook and delete any junk .
I used to enjoy Bouncing back unwanted mails though

toomanykids

Well the junk mail folder is doing its job, can you not setup the junk mail folder to auto delete or are you worried that you might miss genuine emails?

Thanks TonyLisaP. You're right about the junk mail folder and I have had one or two emails I wouldn't want to miss but not many. I'd be lying though to say I had heard of autodelete before you mentioned it (lol).

As a general rule, if you get emails like that do not open them. They are sent out in masses, without knowledge if the account is active or not. By opening it it can report back to the sender that your account is still in use and even sell it on.

Thanks darkfibre. The first email I got like this was quite innocent so I thought nothing of opening the later ones, stupid me!! The reporting back to the sender I didn't know about and I'll be extremely wary from now on :eek: . Thanks for the tip, I appreciate it. You learn something new every day (especially when your blonde!):rotfl: .

You could try this
http://www.mailwasher.net/
It is a spam filter .The basic package is free.
I used it for a while .I haven't bothered since the kids now have there own PC's I just use Outlook and delete any junk .
I used to enjoy Bouncing back unwanted mails though

Thanks globalds. I'll give this site a go. Do you have to be specific about who you want to block? I suppose I'll find out. The bouncing emails back is something else I didn't know about either (duh!). How do you do this?:D Thanks xx

espresso

globalds wrote: »

I used to enjoy Bouncing back unwanted mails though

This is something that you should not do, as it lets the sender know that they have found a valid e-mail address to send junk to, or to sell on to other spammers!

globalds

espresso wrote: »

This is something that you should not do, as it lets the sender know that they have found a valid e-mail address to send junk to, or to sell on to other spammers!

I think you will find it does quite the opposite .
When you bounce the mail ,it sends it back as undeliverable .i.e. No such e-mail address.

superscaper

globalds wrote: »

I think you will find it does quite the opposite .
When you bounce the mail ,it sends it back as undeliverable .i.e. No such e-mail address.

Well I've seen various recommendations that bouncing can still be detected as not being genuine. But ignoring that aspect altogether. You're actually increasing the amount of spam on the internet because invariably the spam emails are sent from a forged address so all the bouncing you're doing is going straight into some poor innocent person's inbox who'll probably come on here to ask "what can I do about getting hundreds of 'failed delivery' emails?". I've seen that completely swamp people's inboxes more than spam messages themselves because you get spam from many different sources but it only takes one spammer to forge your address once in one batch to suddenly get a thousand failed delivery notices in a day. Deliberate bouncing is basically unintentional spamming as far as I've seen.