Swamped with 5,000 spams today!

[Loiseau]

Is this a general problem today, or is it just me?

When I checked my email this afternoon (having done it last a couple of hours earlier), I had 4,168 pouring in (happily, through Mailwasher).  While I was attempting to run my eye down them in case there was something "real" among them, another 452 popped in.  (I have now set my automatic checking to 60 minutes, to give me time to deal with them).

They are almost all informing me that (spurious) messages from my address have been "undelivered", "blocked" etc.

I am used to this on the scale of 120-odd per day (of which 2 or 3 will be legitimate messages), which thanks to Mailwasher I can delete before they reach my computer.  But with this quantity it's impossible to download the good messages onto my computer without the next batch of 20 spams nipping in under the wire with them in the 30 seconds or so it takes to get the legit ones into my Inbox!

Angela

[Clair]

this seems to be just like what happened to me a few weeks ago.

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/920085/ShowPost.aspx

Thankfully, this stopped after 3 or 4 days.

[Ron Avery]

Angela , it looks like that your PC has been cloned or a worm has got into your E mail.  Either way, what is happening is the spurious E mails are going from your E mail address to others and are being rejected by their firewalls, virus protection etc or are just out of date addresses, you are getting the "rejections" back  It may not be anything that you have done knowingly, I got the same problem through a Google group message from one of my groups, but if you have a virus checker should do a full scan ASAP.

[Loiseau]

Just set the scanning in motion, Ron.

But I don't think it can be a worm, because the email addresses are not anything that are in my Address Book.   It has happened for ages on a small scale, but I resigned myself to its being an inevitable part of email culture.  Especially if one has a website.

I am with PlusNet, and having just checked their forum, there is a huge outcry on this topic at the moment, so I think the problem lies with them perhaps.

I have set up loads of filters now with Mailwasher, and to delete before I see them.  So although it might say "280 emails" when I look in a couple of minutes, Mailwasher will only show me the 20 or so that have sneaked past the filter (i..e. with parameters that I did not include this time around").

I am crossing my fingers that, like Clair's, it will stop in a day or two.

Angela

PS  Virus scan just finished, and found nothing.

[Gemini_man]

I usually get 2 per day which arrive during the night from the States and are always about "replica watches etc" - They're always marked as junk by my mail handler and I always just delete them - it's been so regular now for several months that when I don't receive any I almost feel neglected! I use Mozilla Thunderbird which is the mail handler program from the same team as Firefox - it's available at no charge here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Actually Loiseau I don't think it's your computer that's infected but someones who has you in their address book - well that's what happened to me a while ago - either that or your pc is being used as a bot but that should show up on a virus scan.

[suein56]

[quote user="Loiseau"]

PS  Virus scan just finished, and found nothing. [/quote]

And I didn't expect you would find anything Angela; it is not you (or your computer) it is just the way things are at times, and it will go away as quickly as it arrived.

It could be happening for one or a number of  reasons but you will in all probability never know precisely why, frustrating but likely.

Sue

[Tag]

What make of firewall are you running Angela? It seems not to be stopping the problem. or don't they?

[Loiseau]

I don't think I have a Firewall, Tag.  I have an up to date Norton AV.  But Mailwasher and my ISP are also on the lookout for viruses, so NAV has never actually had to identify any!

I am inclined to agree with the comments above from Clair and others, that it is a beastly blip that will go away.  (Gosh, I HOPE so!!)   After 3 days away at Christmas I had 700+ waiting for me, which was unprecedented (until now, that is!)  And it did stop a day or two later.

I have set up so many filters (including some words from totally unfamiliar languages!) now in Mailwasher that I should think almost nothing will get through.  I just saw now that 296 were on their way - but the ones that Mailwasher actually showed on screen can't have been more than 12, so the filters are doing their stuff.  It's just a worry that they might snuff out something legitimate.  (I get people writing in, via the website, asking for information.) 
Thank goodness I am on broadband here at home.  It'd be more of a pain in France, where I am still on grindingly slow dialup.

Thanks for letting me share my frustration!  I suspect I have to grin and bear it.

Angela

 

[Nick Trollope]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]Angela , it looks like that your PC has been cloned or a worm has got into your E mail.  Either way, what is happening is the spurious E mails are going from your E mail address to others and are being rejected by their firewalls, virus protection etc or are just out of date addresses, you are getting the "rejections" back  It may not be anything that you have done knowingly, I got the same problem through a Google group message from one of my groups, but if you have a virus checker should do a full scan ASAP.[/quote]

I doubt if it is anything to do with Angela's PC. This looks like a simple case of address hijacking. Her email address is being used asa return address by a spammer - and as you say, these are rejection notices. But, the emails did not eminate from her PC and, whilst her PC may be infected, I doubt if it is the case of this problem. Angela, I assume you have not got lots of entries in your "sent items" folder?

 

[Pierre ZFP]

[quote user="Loiseau"]

I don't think I have a Firewall, Tag. .

[/quote]

 

Please, please set up a firewall immediately!!! Not having a firewall makes your machine a juicy target for the many predators out there and increases the amount of rubbish we all get, it's likely someone without a firewall that caused the problem in the first place.  I have 2 firewalls, one in the router and a software one too, I happily bear the small processing overhead for this.  I have a utility which shows attempts to access my machine, I watch it sometimes, always many hits a minute are bounced off it.  Unfortunately you have to act very defensivly on the web these days.

[Dinks]

Norton is one of the most invasive programmes you could possibly install on a PC and causes more problems than it is worth. Go to this link and download the Zone Alarm firewall for free; http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp As others have said, you are asking for trouble if you don't have a firewall and are opening your computer up to all sorts of unwanted attention from bots, spiders and trojans which will make a mess of your (and other people's) PC. I would also advise you to download AVG free anti virus which is an excellent free and easy to use antivirus package http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5

Please see this link for an explanation as to why you have received thousands of unwanted emails. Basically your email address has been 'spoofed'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spoofing