Increase in SPAM?

msrourke · 24 Aug 2007, 05:14 AM

I have had a fastmail account for years. I use aliases instead of my actual fastmail account address. I had spam filtering set to basic, never received a spam mail to my main account, ever. Starting about a week ago, I received a couple, now I am up to 10-12 a day. Anybody else notice this?

AldoRossi · 24 Aug 2007, 11:15 AM

I have experienced the same thing across the board in my numerous e-mail accounts. More spam is getting right through fairly strict filters and that started a couple of months ago for me.

robmueller · 24 Aug 2007, 01:09 PM

A number of people have noticed that email addresses they have that previously never got spam are suddenly getting it.

The most likely explanation is that some virus/malware doing the rounds is stealing email addresses from users address books on their computers (eg Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) and then sending them back to the spammers.

That's the only explanation I can think of...

Rob

hadaso · 25 Aug 2007, 09:36 AM

I noticed that I get particular kind of spam to addresses that never were spammed and that are not known to many people. I am quite sure they must have been obtained from the addressbook of a certain person who is the only one I can think of that might have had all of them, but then it might be that the same new virus infected several people at about the same time.

All this spam is the king of "greeting cards" which I read is some kind of phishing and some Stock pump & dump spam (perhaps also Viagra/Cialis from the same spammers). Today I got some to two addresses I never used in my domain and about 130 backscatter messages of the same kind.

The sad consequence is that there's no way to keep addresses from spammers anymore, which is why, more than ever, I want to be able to selectively bounce with a cusom message (I get spam on adresses I gave to people several years ago, I don't know who exactly has them, but I know they can come back in the future with a job offer, so it's important that they can find me).

n5bb · 25 Aug 2007, 08:04 PM

Another way to get spam in a mailbox which has never been used is a dictionary attack. The spammer uses randomly usernames (and variations of commonly used names) and tries variations of these at various domains. I own my own domain and don't use wildcards with this domain any more because of the huge background spam load from such attacks.

Bill

24 Aug 2007, 05:14 AM	#1
msrourke Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 8	Increase in SPAM? I have had a fastmail account for years. I use aliases instead of my actual fastmail account address. I had spam filtering set to basic, never received a spam mail to my main account, ever. Starting about a week ago, I received a couple, now I am up to 10-12 a day. Anybody else notice this?

24 Aug 2007, 11:15 AM	#2
AldoRossi Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 19	I have experienced the same thing across the board in my numerous e-mail accounts. More spam is getting right through fairly strict filters and that started a couple of months ago for me.

24 Aug 2007, 01:09 PM	#3
robmueller Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 6,102 Representative of: Fastmail.FM	A number of people have noticed that email addresses they have that previously never got spam are suddenly getting it. The most likely explanation is that some virus/malware doing the rounds is stealing email addresses from users address books on their computers (eg Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) and then sending them back to the spammers. That's the only explanation I can think of... Rob

25 Aug 2007, 09:36 AM	#4
hadaso The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Holon, Israel. Posts: 4,857	I noticed that I get particular kind of spam to addresses that never were spammed and that are not known to many people. I am quite sure they must have been obtained from the addressbook of a certain person who is the only one I can think of that might have had all of them, but then it might be that the same new virus infected several people at about the same time. All this spam is the king of "greeting cards" which I read is some kind of phishing and some Stock pump & dump spam (perhaps also Viagra/Cialis from the same spammers). Today I got some to two addresses I never used in my domain and about 130 backscatter messages of the same kind. The sad consequence is that there's no way to keep addresses from spammers anymore, which is why, more than ever, I want to be able to selectively bounce with a cusom message (I get spam on adresses I gave to people several years ago, I don't know who exactly has them, but I know they can come back in the future with a job offer, so it's important that they can find me).

25 Aug 2007, 08:04 PM	#5
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 8,929	Another way to get spam in a mailbox which has never been used is a dictionary attack. The spammer uses randomly usernames (and variations of commonly used names) and tries variations of these at various domains. I own my own domain and don't use wildcards with this domain any more because of the huge background spam load from such attacks. Bill