Topic: SPAMMED!

[weathergirl]

Hi guys:  This an important request for help with my hotmail account.  I am getting spammed like crazy, e-mails are flooding my inbox.  This is after I unsubscribed from an e-mail subscription. Would anyone know how I can change my e-mail address or delete it and get a new one?

[capeweather]

I'm not familiar with hotmail but was curious to know if the emails you are getting are coming from the same sender or are they completely different. If they are the same I was going to suggest putting a filter on that one email address to block it. I would think hotmail would have some type of filtering system like outlook where you can just block the sender. I could be wrong.  

Edit: Not sure about changing your email address...you will probably have to create a new account if the spam issue can't be resolved. Sometimes it's good to start off fresh but a real pain to get your new email out to friends and family again.  

[Ravenstar]

Anne-Marie if it is just one culprit or a few, then get a copy of the email address, the body of the email and send them to abuse@hotmail.com. They may be able to block them for you and report them.

I've had good success with hotmail and abuse cases.

[weathergirl]

Thanks for your replies.  Unfortunately, the e-mails were coming so fast and there were so many of them that I have deactivated my original hotmail account and created a new one.

[jaded]

I use sneakemail.com when I register for anything on line.  Sneakemail lets you create "disposable" email accounts, so what you do is create a unique address for every registration.  Every email you receive from that site is tagged with your name for them, so you always know "which" web site was responsible for sending you the crap.  If one of them does become "spammy", you just tell sneakemail to block it, and it's done.

Sneakemail offers a free service which is just as good as the pay service, but the subscription is only $24/year, and I figure it's been worth it to me.  I've used them for several years now.

The drawback, of course, is that someone at Sneakemail.com could be reading your email.  Up to you if you want to risk that, but I figure for most "shopping" signups, I don't care too much.  (I used my real email for paypal, so Sneakemail wouldn't see that password.)

I will say that virtually every web site I've ever signed up for has done a good job at not spamming me (I make sure to always check the "don't share my email address" boxes, of course.)  No site wants to be identified as "the site for getting SPAMMED," so they all try to protect their lists.

I have discovered one place where my email address has leaked out into the world, however.  Chain letters.  Ever get one of those "send this to 20 friends or an angel will smite thee" pieces of crap?  What happens is one of the recipients thinks it's soooooo cute that they post it, addresses and all, on a web page or in a news group.  Spammers LOVE those, they're just filled with nice juicy addresses of gullible people.  Unless you really like those things, ask your friends nicely to not include you in their "list of people who get email jokes," or better yet give them a separate sneakemail address.  Then you can let them know if that's where your spam came from.

If you have any questions, you can email me at f58kbf802@sneakemail.com and I'll be happy to answer them.  Ask quick because when the spammers harvest this address, I'll just shut it down!

[Ravenstar]

jaded, I just love anti-spam services and software. I have something similier to what you speak of called ChoiceMail. It is permission based, in other words if you get an email from someone not on your "white list" of approved senders, it sends them an email with an explanation of the service and a link to "Confirm" themsleves. Just a couple fields to fill in, name and reason for the email. Once this is comleted I get notification and can approve them or decline them. I compare it to a phone answering machine, if it's important enough, leave a message otherwise I guess it wasn't very important, spammers never bother.

I also have full control over all incomming email junk or not, I can chose to look them over or just ignore them and let it delete them in x number of days. All "unknown" senders go into a holding bin. It has very few rules for junk mail, if someone doesn't "confirm" themselves in x number of days the email just gets deleted never reaches my inbox.

Along the lines of your service they allow you "alias" email addresses to use when ordering things. If it starts getting spammed, you just delete the address.

I have it monitoriing most of my pop3 accounts and also yahoo. The free version only monitors one account but it is a one time fee to purchase it to give you the ability for multiple accounts.

As far as getting flooded as Anne-Marie did, there is a feature that if you get x number of emails from the same address and they haven't confirmed themsleves yet, they all go in the junk email box from that point on.

Send me an email you'll see how it works, unless of course you're on my whitelist, everyone on my Friends Map is on my whitelist.

[Anole]

I use sneakemail.com when I register for anything on line.  Sneakemail lets you create "disposable" email accounts, so what you do is create a unique address for every registration.  Every email you receive from that site is tagged with your name for them, so you always know "which" web site was responsible for sending you the crap.  If one of them does become "spammy", you just tell sneakemail to block it, and it's done.

This is basically what I do except I don't use an outside service. I create a forwarder to my spam catching address whenever I have to register on a site. When it starts getting hit I simply delete the forwarder. I've found this approach works better than any other solution available. No false positives, plus I can see who is making my addy available, either on purpose or accidentally, since I create the addresses based on the domain name of the site I'm registering at.