I’m being barraged by dozens of nasty emails daily, ranging from viagra to XXX with photos. Wife is furious and making not so idle threats. I’m using the latest Windows XP version of Outlook Express. I never open any attachments or click on links, just add them to my block senders list. They almost always misspell every word, probably to get by my IP’s filters but the messages are graphically clear. I admit visiting adult sites and that somehow my info has been mined and distributed. I run Spybot, Spysweeper and Trend micro. Any good ways to end this problem short of changing my email address?
Ok, hold on a second. Did you say you can buy viagra on the internet!
Anyway…depending on your isp/email they may have spam tools you can enable. Other than that, using a free gmail or hotmail account is a good idea for anything public because they have pretty decent spam filtering built in. You can still hook those accounts up to outlook…
I have “allowed senders only” enabled through my isp. That way nothing random gets through. I have to go to the webmail server to check the junk file regularly to make sure I’m not missing anything important.
You have probably already done the damage by using your real email on dodgy sites. Never, ever do this - if you must give an email, make a new one on gmail, hotmail or yahoo and use that. Or use spamgourmet.
Best way to deal with it now is to admit defeat and start a new email account and be careful who you give it out to.
I second recommendation for gmail - it is prettty good for filtering your email.
Cheers,
dt.
Take the advice others have given. Also, make sure you have done your software updates on Outlook. The spam filter updates may help block the newer ones.
what kind of email account do you have? I notice that my hotmail get alot of that stuff and I always assumed it was because microsoft sells my address. I use my hotmail as my “junk” address…
No problems with gmail…I have one but only give it to trusted sources (friends family etc)
I also get alot on my work email because its on our company website…and its been mined…not much you can do about it, and its probably not because you visit some dodgy sites…although it could be too.
No one uses hotmail anymore…at least for any email account that they actually care about.
If your email address is “out there”, as it apparantly is and well permiated on spam lists, then the only thing to do is start fresh. Kill your old email address and start a new one.
Never, never, never give your main eamil account to any website, school lists for school, etc… they always end up attracting spam in the end.
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Start a new address for your “main” account. Use that one for family and friends and important stuff.
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Create throw-away accounts that you can use if you need to list an email address or give one out on-line.
I also recommend Gmail.
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As others have stated it depends on the type of account you have. You can do anything from an ISP blocker to creating white lists that will allow only the people on the list thru, if your provider allows that or you have set up your own E-mail.
I will say that pretty much no matter what type of account you have, outside of a white list, you will get spam. Spammers have gone so far as to simply send out random E-mails to domains in hopes of hitting a real name.
I recently had and experience with our site running out of room. Couldn’t figure out why because our web content was pretty minimal compared to the size available. Upon checking the mail accounts were filled. The one that was filled was the “Default” account. This account was is the account that any mail that was sent to our domain that did not match a real account the mail went here. This account was NEVER used for any E-mail so the name was never out on the web. However this account caught almost 1.2GB of E-mails in less than 6 months, 100% spam. I actually looked at some of the names that they were sent to and they were pretty much random names. Every once in a while one of those are going to hit a real existing account.
~Matt
You can also buy a personal firewall like zone alarm, or black ice to keep those unwanted folks from getting your email address from your outlook express/internet explorer configurations.