Emails

Giggleswick · Veteran Member

Emails

Wannabe nomad · Senior Member

Yes
It's because we are under siber attack at a higher level than previously and unfortunately we have to get used to it.

Whenarewethere · Guru

Up to a few years ago got increasing numbers of spam emails. I changed my email address a couple of years ago & the spam emails stopped. To-date still barely any.

Santa · Guru

No, I use Bigpond with a Microsoft email account, seldom see spam.

Are We Lost · Guru

The most likely reason is that you have given your email address to a site that has passed it on to the scammers. Or maybe your details were published in one of those recent hacking events that have been in the news.

Several months ago I was getting many a day to a rarely used email address .... except it's the one used for Facebook. So maybe I clicked on some dubious link there. After a few months they suddenly dropped off to about 2-3 a day. The fact that they started suddenly, and diminished just as suddenly it's probably the one organisation responsible. I believe if you never click on one of the emails they will eventually take you off the hitlist.

I have had two other email addresses for several years .... one for personal and one for just about everything else. The personal account never gets any, and just the occasional one to the other address. So I think it's just being aware not to give dubious sites your email address.

-- Edited by Are We Lost on Tuesday 29th of November 2022 03:50:58 PM

Cuppa · Guru

All my email is redirected through Gmail, their spam filters are vey good. I could probably count the number of spam/phishing emails which have got through this year on one hand. Once in a blue moon I have a peek in my gmail junk mail folder & am always surprised how much rubbish has accrued there.

Mein · Senior Member

Slightly off-topic but, anyway . . . .

I have 2 email addresses; a long standing, paid account with fastmail.com and a second account which I believe is totally untraceable back to me.

The fastmail account costs $27.50 per year ($2.30 per month) and if there is another email service that provides better spam protection, then I'll eat my hat. I provide this email address when giving my 'real' email address is absolutely, totally necessary.

I use the untraceable email account for all other occasions that my email address is requested.

As for the untraceable email account, this is the process that I used:

1. Open a free email account with Gmail. The email address that you choose is absolutely unimportant because the account will be discarded. Use you regular email address to receive the ubiquitous security code to activate your new email account.

2. Open another free email account with Gmail. The email address that you choose is absolutely unimportant because the account will also be discarded. Use the first Gmail email address to receive the ubiquitous security code to activate your new email account. When done, DELETE the first Gmail email account.

3. Open a third free email account with Gmail. Use an email address that you're likely to remember. Use you the second Gmail email address to receive the ubiquitous security code to activate your new email account. When done, DELETE the second Gmail email account.

I check the Gmail account once a month or so and delete, without reading, the 100 or so emails that it has each time.

Given the nature of this forum, no doubt some forum members will challenge that the third email address cannot be traced but I KNOW it cannot.

And, for anyone who likes a challenge, find out all you can from this email address - himinmackay@gmail.com!!!

smwhiskey · Senior Member

Mein wrote:
Slightly off-topic but, anyway . . . .
Given the nature of this forum, no doubt some forum members will challenge that the third email address cannot be traced but I KNOW it cannot.
And, for anyone who likes a challenge, find out all you can from this email address - himinmackay@gmail.com!!!

Difficult but not impossible....particularly if the legality of what you're doing isn't an important concern.

I like a challenge but as I try to stay on the right side of the law I'll cover this in theory at a very high level. I'll also assume that you don't use the google account to log into various services.

Theres more than one way to do this. Heres a couple that Joe Average might use.

1. Send an email to the account with a tracking image in it. When you access the email it'll log the access to the image giving the hacker your IP address (amongst other very useful pieces of information). Then its just a matter of tracking the IP address back through the ISP to your account via the ISP network access logs which have to be kept for at least 2 years. A more sophisticated approach is to insert a Trojan into the email disguised as an image or a pdf file and just download the information.

2. Get the password of the gmail account (there numerous ways of achieving this none of which I'll go into for legal reasons) and just read or auto forward the email. Very easy to do this without the victim even being aware that you're doing it.

I've seen both these methods used in the real world to compromise email accounts and extract user information

Simon

Mein · Senior Member

I wrote, "I check the Gmail account once a month or so and delete, without reading, the 100 or so emails that it has each time."

smwhiskey wrote, "(irrelevant content)".

gold dandelion · Senior Member

';--have i been pwned?
Check if your email or phone is in a data breach

himinmackay@gmail.com!!!
Good news no pwnage found!
No breached accounts and no pastes (subscribe to search sensitive breaches)

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Giggleswick · Veteran Member

Smashed the record this morning - 57 Spam emails including 10 From Fedex advising my orders are ready for despatch - very strange when I have not ordered anything - and another 7 telling me how to enlarge my willy - at 79 years of age I think my willy has seen its day

Possum3 · Guru

Giggleswick wrote:
at 79 years of age I think my willy has seen its day

Never say die. Its my aim to get to 105 and to have the undertaker get a hooker in to lower the mast so he can get the lid on the box

Bobdown · Guru

Possum3 wrote:
Giggleswick wrote:
at 79 years of age I think my willy has seen its day
Never say die. Its my aim to get to 105 and to have the undertaker get a hooker in to lower the mast so he can get the lid on the box

It's better off looking at the top of the mast, rather than looking at your shoes...... smile smile

gold dandelion · Senior Member

makes sure your camera is off all the time. I have also put on here a couple of times. try pwned passwords for one and have I been pwned for the other. this will tell you, it is not a scam and you may get a shock, you will see i did type in Meins email address Himinmckay and at this stage it hasn't been pawnd. the spelling is correct for pwnd here. try it