Strange spam problem

[desertman]

Hello,

A friend of mine has sent me the following email and asks for help:

"Since about 3 weeks I get swamped with junk mail.
Usually I got about one a week, now it’s more than 100 per day.
They are about porn or money.
As far as I can see they all come in through firstlast1@gmail.com.
Plus, somebody created an email ‘first@aol.com’, but it is linked to the above email.
If I block the second one I cannot anymore receive email through the xxyyzz11@gmail.com account."

What is very strange is the (allegedly) newly created email address first@aol.com - "first" stands here for a rather usual German first name and I would be willing to bet that that email address has been taken by a "real" person with the first name "first." decades ago.

I cannot make any sense out of this. I have not looked yet at my friend's computer.

Does anybody know what might be going on here and has suggestions what could be done to resolve this?

Thanks - desertman

 

[satcomer]

This why I suggest you create three email account with 3 different severs and use one for personal that you NEVER use your person on Any web site! Use another for web traffic wanting an email address and third for work!

I say this because most email is used to traded and sold to whomever can pay for them and that included anybody with highest bids! Plus some web sites are created by hard core spammers! Most spammers are bad people in real life and now it controlled by criminals and international gangsters!

 

[eRondeau]

This why I suggest you create three email account with 3 different severs and use one for personal that you NEVER use your person on Any web site! Use another fir web traffic wanting an email address and third for work!

Agree 100%. I too have a "friends only" email address that I've never once used for anything else. I've had it for 15 years and it gets exactly 0 spam emails per day. It's the only one that goes to my Macs, iPhone, and iPad Mail.app. My secondary email is only used for online shopping at reputable sellers where I'm a repeat customer; it gets about two-dozen spam emails per day. I also have a third email that's reserved for really sketchy websites, one-time purchases, and newsletter subscriptions; it gets a dozen spams per day. It's super-easy to manage the three because I know that only important emails from "real people" are making my iPhone ding. None of the others are urgent and I check them when I get around to it.

 

[NoBoMac]

^^This.

Back to OP. The email addresses are the spam sender and not the friend/receiver?

That aside, their email provider might be a big part of the problem. For example, my accounts are Gmail and their spam filters are really good. Combined with above post tactics and Gmail filters, I see maybe 3-5 spams a day, and they land in the Spam folder. Compared to some family members, who use the local ISP for service and email address, they get far more spam than I see.

 

[desertman]

The Gmail address that I mentioned in my original posting is my friend's (the receiver's) Gmail email address which she has been using for many years. It is indeed very strange that she is getting here suddenly - from one day to the next - more than 100 spam mails a day.

Just a couple of minutes ago I finished a TeamViewer session with my friend and could see the mess now myself. So far today she got about 85 spam mails sent to her Gmail account. Literally all spam mails that I have seen are clearly and immediately recognizable as junk (both in the body and in the header) - really strange that Google lets them through.

Apple's Mail sorts almost all of them into the Junk folder. However, it is still annoying to see so many spam mails coming in. I have created a filter for her in Mail that marks all spam mail as "read" (she says she almost never gets any not-spam mail sorted into the junk folder and that she at least for now does not mind if she misses them). I also created a new Gmail address for her, but suggested to wait for some time before she switches over to that address as it could very well be that Google gets a hold of this spam wave.

I guess that is all that can be done in the moment. Or am I missing somethim?

The AOL address that I also mentioned in my original posting is just a fake "to" address that the spammers are using for many of their spam mails - my friend considered this address to be "linked" to her address just because she did not understand what was going on. The mails are probably going to her real address via BCC.

Cheers - desertman