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Re: [LUG] Junk Mails

 


On 27/04/18 14:36, Neil wrote:
I know that this is off topic, but even so.... I get plenty of junk mails which I ignore and delete. Recently I have had several which are slightly different. These come as a reminder about unpaid invoices, so say, which is rubbish. Several say they are from BT, which I don't use, and others which are supposedly from companies I have never heard of. They all invite me to check details by clicking on a URL. Yeah, right.

The most recent is for some plant hire, for over Â8000. Plant hire, at my age??? So my question is, is this a new trend, or have I just been lucky until recently? And, above all, what do others do about junk mails, except delete them? I am wondering about changing some of my email account names.

Anyway, I feel better for the moan,

thanks,

Neil

Once an email address has been obtained by a spammer it is often sold on, and over time the amount of spam that a particular email address receives will only go up. My email domain was registered in 2002 and I've used the same email address since then. This unfortunately means that without filtering I receive quite a bit of spam email attempts every day, often 20 or so, but peaks which go on for weeks where I get 50-60 every day. I've spent a lot of time configuring clamav and spamassassin to try to block and it is sometimes successful, sometimes not so much. What does get through to me I put into a Junk folder, and train the spamassassin bayes database to try and improve its detection.

In order to minimize the exposure of an email address you would need to be very careful about who you share it with, noting that you obviously advertise the email in every email that you write, so that includes the best practice of not ever responding to spams. Also note that "unsubscribe" buttons and links are often keyed to validate your email address - so if a spam seems malicious and not just unsolicited business email (UBE) then you should not trust or use any unsubscribe links it may contain.

Unfortunately, dealing with spam can turn into a full time job!!

So it may be worth getting two new email addresses (one that you value and only give out to trusted people), and a throwaway one that you can give out to not so trusted people, which you can change if it starts to attract a lot of spam.

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