So, for about a year now my Gmail account has been receiving emails from "myfullfirstname"@AOL.com.
I don’t use my full first name and haven’t since I was like 10.
I do not have an AOL account, and as far as I know never have.
If I click on the actual address bar it certainly looks like it’s going to an AOL account. And, it’s all US spam shit (prescription drugs, insurance, health care…blah, blah, bah). I’m Canadian BTW.
This is not, as far as I can tell, from a single provider. Somehow, in some weird transporter mix-up I have AOL messages to a non-existent account being placed in my Gmail in-box.
Something coming from “aol.com” does not need to actually be from AOL. Email has basically no inherent sender verification system, though some providers have tacked one on as part of their SPAM detection. I remember old email clients that would allow you to just manually type in any from address you wanted. It’s more like the return address on an envelope.
My guess would be that they know how people pay more attention to things when it includes their name, and the spammers are trying to take advantage of that. And the @aol.com is just to add some legitimate email service to seem more real.
Do you have your full first name on information that would also have your email address? Heck, is it used as the name for your actual email account? That would likely be how the spammers got it. They don’t know it’s not the name you actually use.
Or, to continue the snail mail analogy above, it’s like they looked up some records and found out Leaffan lived at this particular address, and wrote a letter with Leaffan from AOL Incorporated as the return address to hope it would catch your eye.
Like has been said, the From field of an email can be anything. It’s the same like how you can write anything as a return address on an envelope. Savvy scammers try to be crafty with the From field to get you to open it, so they may put your own name there.
To filter those emails, open the email, click on the 3 dots, and then click on the “Filter messages like these”
You will need to log into your Gmail account through your web browser.
Click on settings (then show all settings).
Then in the top row click on filters and blocked addresses
You click on “Create a new filter”
In the from field put in the address you want to block
The click create filter
On the next screen that appears, check the box that says delete it, then hit create filter.
And that’s it.
On the phone, you should see two triple dots on the right when you open the email. One is at the top of the screen and one is at the start of the email. The ones at the top let you mark it as spam, which Google may use to move them to spam in the future. The 2nd one has an option to block emails from “myfullfirstname…AOL.com”. I think the 2nd one is essentially creating a filter like you would on the computer interface to gmail.
The last half-dozen times I got a call from my college’s alumni office, in the phase of the call where they’re “verifying that the contact information we have for you is still valid” (you know, before they ask for money), they’ve asked “And is your email address still firstinitiallastname@yahoo.com?”. And every time, I’ve told them “No, that has never been my email address; I’ve never had a Yahoo email account; please change that.”. They never did. I’ve given up on them; if they can’t care enough to get my basic information right, then I can’t care enough to give them money.
All I can figure is that they’ve found that asking people to verify their email address is a good way to engage them, and so for alumni for whom they don’t know addresses, they’ve got a system set up to automatically generate plausible addresses for them so they have something to ask about. Maybe your alma mater did something similar, and it somehow got out into the wild? I mean, not that I’m suggesting that a reputable university would do anything like selling their mailing list to spammers, of course: That would be shallow and money-grubbing.
Jeesh. Thanks for the support folks. I didn’t realize I was missed.
Anyway, setting up a filter on my desktop seemed easy-peasy; time will tell. I rarely do anything on an actual computer these days and am a little surprised how many options for Gmail are available on an actual computer.
So, thanks. Fingers crossed.
I’ll try to be more current here moving forward. I didn’t realize how much of a creature of habit I’ve become though.
