One of my email accounts is being deluged with emails from Microsoft and email providers.
The emails from Microsoft are offering a patch, which I am loathe to even open. Especially since it’s in my “Bulk” folder. The emails from email providers are basically to tell me that a message to such-and-such email address could not be delivered.
Now, the problem is that I never sent the emails. And the emails from Microsoft are so large (and in such quantity) that if I don’t log in every few hours, delete and files, and empty the trash, it fills my mailbox beyond the maximum permitted amount.
How may I stop this waterfall of annoyance?
[Sauron]
We shall be most grateful and indebted to any aid any of you may be able to offer Us.
[/Sauron]
In most email programs, you can set up filter rules that automatically move this spam from your inbox to a spam box that you set up. Then you can check that spam box once a week or so, just in case some good email is caught by your filter rules. But generally you just delete everything in your spam box.
Meanwhile your regular inbox is much cleaner with most of this spam bounced elsewhere.
But you do have to add or modify your filter rules occasionally – spammers keep trying new titles and new spellings to try to get around the filters people set up.
Look in the documentation for your email program, and see what it has available for filtering. It takes a bit to set this up, but it will save you lots of time overall. (And it’s kind of fun to look in your spambox and see hundreds of messages, and to kill them all with one command!)
That’s no problem - all the spam’s going to my spam folder. Problem is that stuff in the spam folder gets counted in how much space my mailbox is using. So, if I don’t clear it out often enough, they might shut down my email account.
Is there any way to cope other than logging in five times a day to clear out the spam folder, and then empty the trash?
I caught the same virus a few days ago, WeRSauron. All those failure notices are truly fucking up my earthlink account and I don’t know what to do about it. Like you, I fell for the faux “security patch”.
Most ISPs are well aware of the problems, I would just notify them that you have this problem and ask for an increase in mailbox quota for the duration.
My ISP is giving regular tallies and has needed to increase the size of their mail server as we are all being hit hard by swen on the tail of sobig.
Other than that, I check all my mail through mailwasher and delete the crap on the server without wasting time downloading.
This is happening to me lately – my Yahoo mailbox is filling up with copies of the SWEN email.
Even if I filter them to the trash folder, they still count towards the max size of my mailbox, so I’ve had to empty my bulk and trash folders 3x a day for the past 2 weeks or so, just so I don’t get up to 100% full.
Is there a way for me to see who’s the infected user that’s causing me to get these emails, so I can tell them to virus scan their computer?
I have an idea… tell EVERYONE on your list that THEY have a swan virus and to do a virus check. In fact, tell them that SOMEONE on THEIR list has the virus, so it would be great if they told their buddies to do the virus check. It wouldn’t hurt a soul, and perhaps save some MB.
WeRSauron, I would have like to know who your email isp is/was. Can’t you set up a new email address? I realise this is hard to do if you’ve already committed to that addy (like with business cards, etc) But as long as you were going to change it, here is IMHO the best way to go about it:
[list=1]
[li]Get at least two email addys. One will be your permanent one, where you guard it’s identity very well, and one that is eventually disposable.[/li] [list=a]
[li]TIP: I would make my permanent email address include at least one numeral and one symbol. Some spammers out there use an alphabet attack on the most common isps. They don’t care if 99% of it gets bounced back. (like aaaaa@hotmail.com is probably non existant) It shouldn’t matter that it’s a difficult email address to remember (for others) because … see next point.[/li] [li]Forward your secondary or pseudo address inbox to your primary inbox. If for some reason it gets blacklisted you can always 86’ it and get a new one. Meanwhile, your main inbox is free and clear.[/li] [li]Would I publish the real address? No. It’s too easy to get blacklisted. Publish ONE of your ‘fake’ (pseudo) addys and only in limited quantity. There are many more things I don’t have time to say about my personal safeguards in this point…[/li] [/list=a]
[li]Heavily guard your main (CO$TLY) address. Reveal it to no one. If you are paying for service/storage, i’d follow this to a T.[/li][li]Guard your pseudo’s also, but these are the ones you give out. I personally CODE mine. (This is something advertisers do, so they know what ads are selling, and which aren’t.) I’d use david_fam1@yahoo.com for those related to me, david_friend2 for friends, …etc. These addys follow my number/symbol rule BTW.[/li]If one of them fail, i’d change it and besides finding out who was careless with my addy, i’d notify the OTHER folks to incriment that numeral for the FRESH addy. (david_fam1 = david_fam2)
[list=a]
[li]One way to guard them is to insert a few erronious letters or numbers in your addy when you post to a public domain, like this message board. THen in your tag line include the words: “I hate spam. Please remove the 123 number from my email address if you need to email me” or similar. That way a human being will be able to email you, a bot will not.[/li] [li]another way is to write it backwards on the screen. A human should be able to figure it out, a bot, probably not. moc.oohay@1maf_divad <–for example.[/li] [li]Or you could use them in conjunction. (combo)[/li] [/list=a]
[li]You can even create a 3 link chain if you get really paranoid or fustrated like myself. EX: PUBLIC email > PERSONAL email > PRIVATE inbox. Give out your personal addy to friends or family, and give out your public to the general public (or temp online sign-ups) Foward the public to the personal, and the personal to the private. Of course DON’T TELL ANYONE related to an ISP that you are resorting to this because they will say that forwarding emails contribute to the internet congestion. F-dat.[/li]
I don’t recomend more than 3 links in your chain. :eek: trust me :eek: and also, don’t repeat an ISP in a chain.
[/list=1]
