Spamalot

[RX8]

In the last 10 days or so the amount of spam emails from my hotmail/outlook account has sky rocketed for me. I went from maybe 30-40 spam emails a day to more than 300, maybe more as I delete them all day long. Outlook does a decent job of moving them to the junk folder but I still need to sort through that folder to see if anything important was deemed as junk in error. Just this morning I received 54 emails from a sender “iCloud 50GB Free” all in a span of less than 20 minutes. The actual sender emails are random letters but ending in the same @hotmail.es. I am also getting many various survey requests, emails saying I shouldn’t pay my electricity bill and emails about items that I have “won”.

Just me or are the spammers ratcheting up the throttle across the board?

 

[susieq]

I had noticed, probably starting about a year or so ago, that the spam had been increasing in waves, some days nothing or 1 or 2, some days 50 or more. I started hovering my mouse over sender, if I didn't recognize it, it got marked as spam or junk. Took a month or two ~ and LOTS of patience ~ but now I only receive 1 or 2. I still open my spam folder to see if there is anything that shouldn't be there.

 

[pedro47]

We are not receiving any spam emails daily. But we received about twenty spam phone calls per day every day.

Celebrity Cruise Line send a daily cruise vacation email offer every day. LOL. That is not spam email.

All other spam emails are blocked by our Spectrum account.

 

[clifffaith]

I am afraid to “unsubscribe” to spam email fearing they’ll just pass my email on. No problem telling Big 5 or Knix I don’t want anymore emails, but I ignore the others. My iCloud email I keep pretty clean and don’t order anything off of it, and that keeps me to a handful of “legit spam” unlike my yahoo email which probably gets 100 per day.

 

[dioxide45]

You would think so called AI would have solved this for us.

 

[klpca]

I am afraid to “unsubscribe” to spam email fearing they’ll just pass my email on. No problem telling Big 5 or Knix I don’t want anymore emails, but I ignore the others. My iCloud email I keep pretty clean and don’t order anything off of it, and that keeps me to a handful of “legit spam” unlike my yahoo email which probably gets 100 per day.

I still use yahoo as my primary (since 2004 - I tried switching but it was just easier to stick with it). In the spam folder, you can block emails before you delete them. I made a concerted effort to do this a few months ago and I can go days before anything shows up in my spam folder.

 

[moonstone]

I always see a jump in my spam when I log into a new (ie; timeshare or hotel) wifi. We just arrived at our FL condo about 6hrs ago and I logged into our personal Xfinity internet about 3 hrs ago and already I have well over 40 new spam emails! Sometimes when I have nothing better to do (haha) I go into each email and hit "unsubscribe". It takes quite a few days to get off their 'list', but it does help. Then there are the 'unsubscribe' links that my virus scanner wont let me continue to as it says the address is dangerous!

~Diane

 

[Brett]

I still use yahoo as my primary (since 2004 - I tried switching but it was just easier to stick with it). In the spam folder, you can block emails before you delete them. I made a concerted effort to do this a few months ago and I can go days before anything shows up in my spam folder.

same here, Yahoo does a good job blocking spam email

 

[TheHolleys87]

I always see a jump in my spam when I log into a new (ie; timeshare or hotel) wifi.

It seems I see a jump just being away from home! Riding down the highway I start seeing more make it to my Inbox, and then my Spam box fills up too.

 

[SmithOp]

I never look in the spam folders, Gmail does a good job managing it

 

[TheHolleys87]

I never look in the spam folders, Gmail does a good job managing it

So Gmail never puts an important email in Spam by mistake?

 

[linsj]

So Gmail never puts an important email in Spam by mistake?

I can attest that it does.

 

[artringwald]

So Gmail never puts an important email in Spam by mistake?

Not very often, but I've had it happen before. I check the spam folder occasionally more for my own amusement at the subject titles.

 

[joestein]

Thought this was going to be about the musical.......

But... now I am listening to the soundtrack on spotify.

 

[artringwald]

Thought this was going to be about the musical.......

But... now I am listening to the soundtrack on spotify.

I'm not tempted to eat this anymore because it expired in Dec 2010.

 

[ScoopKona]

I was hoping this was a thread about the musical -- and it was being revived somewhere.

Since Tim Curry has debilitating health problems, the "lightning in a bottle" which was the original cast will never be duplicated. Tim Curry, Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce on stage together.

As for spam email, no, I'm not getting much of that. I have two email addresses. One for basic online things and online commerce. And one for important things. The "important" address barely gets any mail at all, and usually from the county tax assessor. The commerce address isn't seeing any real increase. But it does get a few pieces -- usually from Marriott. Most of the solicitations I receive are from companies I enjoy doing business with. So I don't mind those.

 

[clifffaith]

Thought this was going to be about the musical.......

But... now I am listening to the soundtrack on spotify.

I immediately got heart palpitations. The damn holy grail was under my seat and I got drug up on stage!

 

[SmithOp]

So Gmail never puts an important email in Spam by mistake?

Never look, but it would have to be spammy looking to get misdirected.

Sometimes I do get mail in my regular mailbox that GMail warns might be spammy, it let's me decide.

I have also turned on the feature that separates important mail from promotions and social media. The promotions are where the sketchy stuff falls if it gets through. Most of the promotions are from apps I've installed since Covid from all the food orders, so I peruse the subjects to see if there is a discount coupon if I'm going out for lunch that day.

 

[Brett]

Replying ‘Stop’ to a Political Text Made It So Much Worse
how our columnist banished the barrage of unwanted election messages
https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/political-text-messages-stop-17cf2abb


In the game of political texts, “Stop” apparently means “Go! Go! Go!”

“Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous texting vendors out there who will perversely use that opt-out message that you sent back, They use that as a data point, that ‘Oh, we found a live number!’” Since the text apocalypse hit my iPhone, I’ve been digging into what happened, and how to filter out the SMS spam.

1. Stop texting ‘Stop’

2. Report as junk- Now that you’ve resisted the urge to reply, you should flag the message. On an iPhone, tap the “Report Junk” button under the body of the
message and then tap “Delete and Report Junk.”

3. Get a spam filter

This week, my jealousy of Android users runs deep. Google’s operating system has advanced, real-time spam filtering, so many of these messages don’t reach the inbox. Apple doesn’t have that, but it does have a tool for filtering all messages from mystery numbers into an Unknown Senders folder (Settings > Apps > Messages > Message Filtering > Filter Unknown Senders).

 

[RX8]

And just like that I am back to the normal 30-40 spams a day. Not sure why it spiked the way it did. Maybe this will become an annual thing for me like the Perseid meteor shower.