Anyone have experience and/or advice on being inundated with spam e-mails
I’m getting 50 or so a day and its something that started in the last few weeks.
All go into my BT E-Mail spam folder, so easy enough to detect & delete, but its still a PITA to block each individual sender & domain, problem is it doesn’t stop.
They all preport to be from well known brands e.g. Fedex, Sainsburys etc …
All seem to have a no reply e-mail address; e.g. noreplay@playltobet.com, the clue maybe is that all have the same @playtobet part.
It might be coincidental but it started at the time I changed mobile phone to EE.
Anyone had the same/similar and any ideas how to fix’um
It’s more likely you’ve been put on a mugs list from something you’ve perhaps bought online and the details have been traded on.
Try this link.
Google this
have i been pwned
Thanks, but I rarely buy online, maybe only Amazon once in while.
Yes I had already worked out my mail address has been traded.
Thanks for the link, I’ll give it a go.
My Norton reports nothing breached since 2017 and I know exactly what that was
FYI. I’m sure my e-mail (which was reserved for important personal stuff) was leaked via an ‘other seller’ on Amazon. I now get spam from MS business e-mail addresses, which include my christian name…hmmm.
Since the late 90s I have had two private email addresses. One I use to sign up to accounts for services etc. The other purely for family and two very close trusted friends. One gets all the spam. The other gets none at all even after decades.
You can also look on haveibeenhacked.com and it will tell you if the address is found on dodgy lists.
Spammers don’t need lists, or for you to have bought something online or to have visited a site. It’s all automated these days.
They can easily generate random email addresses and of the billions they generate and send mails to, a proportion will be actual addresses belong to real-life people.
I posted something similar a few months ago as my spam went from a couple a day to dozens.
I’d personally not bother wasting time blocking them as the email headers are often spoofed and what you might block is not actually where the email originated.
Some of the cleverer scams will even try to say you’ve been hacked by making it appear as though you sent an email to yourself, citing this as proof they’ve got control of the computer.
The main thing to avoid as you probably know, is clicking on any links which will often take you to different sites anyway or might download malware.
The fact that they are being detected by the spam filter is good, but with large volumes of spam there’s a danger you miss genuine/important emails which occasionally get tagged as spam. This is more significant now that so many companies seem to use email or texts for communications even if you’re preferences are for conventional mail for important things.
I’ve had loads of missed messages from companies go into unknown sender on my iPhone as i’ve never consented to them texting me and I ignore the folder.
Good general advice here especially about reporting phishing or extortion emails:
I didn’t know that Norton was still a thing! Ironically, most of the spam in my “junk” folder is from addresses purporting to be MacAfee or some other “anti-viral” service…
I always considered the gotcha with these kind of sites is that if they are compromised you’ve offered up your email address voluntarily to spammers/scammers, though this one is referenced by the NCSC in relation to certain email scams.
Was going to say the same. I created a load of iCloud accounts for immediate family years ago essentially using our names, but have generally suggested they all used aliases for most things, especially non-family related emails.
A few months ago we all started getting more spam than usual, I strongly suspect this was simply randomly generated email recipients for the most part using names and surnames.
At least 3 aliases however have been compromised, one I suspect via Amazon, another used mainly for Utility companies and one I used years ago for communications from the gym, and it’s especially odd as many emails are addressed to 3 of us - strongly suspect it was once used by the gym for communications regarding classes we’d enrolled in.
Report them:
Create a new email, and drag the emails into it then Blind CC it to as many Phishing websites as possible, e.g.
report at phishing.gov.uk (most important)
spoofing at amazon.com
phishing at tescobank.com
phishing at santander.co.uk
phishing at hsbc.com
phishing at natwest.com
etc (ensure you include your ISP and bank)
Do not just forward them, as they miss a load of the header details
Setup email rules
You can do this in your email client to automatically delete emails from known addresses.
Also you can do this from your ISP email client so they get removed straight away before they get to you
Unsubscribe
Be careful with this one because it also acknowledges you exist. I’ve had a few health ones that I’ve had success in unsubscribing from, but you need to be fairly sure the websites are legit - its just that they have purchased a load of email addresses from someone (I suspect social media)
Use a couple of email addresses
E.g. have different stuff for shopping, and personal one for friends and banking. Ultimately you may need to shut one of these down, but at least if they are spread over a number of accounts, it will be less work.
If you have apple phones/Mac, then they have a Hide-My-Email feature that generates a new email address that acts like a proxy. In theory you have have one for each account you have
I use Hide my e-mail a lot, presumably other companies have similar options. It’s a shame you can’t create unlimited custom aliases (you can still have 3 from memory, used to be 5).
Years ago on dial-up we used Freeserve, and they had a really simple custom email alias system which was great and I’d use an alias with the name of the online contact and my unique username so I’d potentially know where spam originated from.
I tend not to unsubscribe as it often doesn’t work even for legitimate sites, and because as you say it confirms an active email address.
As you have BT, then via BT online mail app click the user name top right, and select Settings, then you have options to block senders or to add rules. Here are a couple I setup for someone as an example. You can click on an email and select block under the “More” option
Hi GadgetMan, thanks for both posts … I all over the BT blocking senders and domains, my BT has a list as long as your arm. Problem is what looks to be the same sender e-address keeps changing
I just hope they get fed up and realise (ASAP) I ain’t biting the worm
Unfortunately computers dont get fed up.
My own list of blocked emails and rules is also long. You might be able to use wildcards - worth a try. I’ve had waves of lots, then they stop. I’l hoping it’s because I have reported them - but who knows.
I had a lot of that last May. Unfortunately they also included my password for that email account, and then set about causing mayhem with many of my online gaming accounts. I assume they’d picked up the passwords from emails. One of my gaming sites even had its email address changed. I reckon that one was “real”.
The PC has since been quarantined, and since it was old, and exhibited a couple of intermittent faults, has been replaced by a hot new PC . The old one is awaiting destruction, along with two others! I’ll sanitise and retain the SSDs and keep the PSUs and two of the graphics cards (Nvidia 1070s), which will run nicely in a couple of the “current” crop of family PCs.
And 2FA has been activated on every website that supports it!
. The old one is awaiting destruction, along with two others! I’ll sanitise and retain the SSDs and keep the PSUs and two of the graphics cards (Nvidia 1070s), which will run nicely in a couple of the “current” crop of family PCs.