I have a new hobby. A couple of days ago there was a really big jump in junk emails. I bet I am up to over a hundred a day.

My new hobby is clicking unsubscribe. Most work the way you would expect – but not all. On several you click and a dialogue box pops up with every email you have had in your life so you can pick one. Unsubscribe on one leads to a webpage to order stuff. Another gets you Pfishing warning. Or nothing happens.

Any bets that by acknowledging I read an email that I will be up to 200 a day?

Perhaps you mean advertising emails?

If you react to their content, they are unlikely to leave you alone...

I use free ad blockers that are installed as extensions that match your browser.

For example, I have Google Chrome and the corresponding blocker AdBlock.

Arab Nights (imported) wrote: Fri Nov 29, 2024 8:30 am I have a new hobby. A couple of days ago there was a really big jump in junk emails. I bet I am up to over a hundred a day.

My new hobby is clicking unsubscribe. Most work the way you would expect – but not all. On several you click and a dialogue box pops up with every email you have had in your life so you can pick one. Unsubscribe on one leads to a webpage to order stuff. Another gets you Pfishing warning. Or nothing happens.

Any bets that by acknowledging I read an email that I will be up to 200 a day?

Most of such emails have unsubscribe link with unique identifier. So - you click it - the sender finds out that your inbox is active, you read it, and click on the links.

Guess what happens next?

PS. Best response to spammers is tungsten carbide utility pole. Launched from high earth orbit into location of the spammer. Unfortunately - we don't have IP-guided missiles.

Try as I might, I actively work to get these things into separate folders in my e-mail where I can bulk delete them. Sadly, these fucking spammers are always one step ahead.

I unsubscribe from lists where I might have been put on legitimately (i.e. a company I did business with) and possibly ones that might have gotten my info via legitimate channels (i.e. purchased mailing lists from legitimate sources...)

Otherwise I use the spam detector on my mail client which sort of works, though it mislabels a lot of 'ham'. I look at the 'from' address on anything spammish that gets through, and if I see the same domain more than a few times I add a filter to my client for the domain portion (i.e. 'sender/from contains rufcorpus' ) The filter rule moves it immediately to the client's spam folder instead of the inbox

My experience is that the bulk of the spam is either a barrage from the same sender, or a bunch of different spammers using the same 'from' domain and putting filters for those blocks 90+% at least for a few days until they find a new domain, and I add another rule, etc...

I then scan through the spam folder at least once a day (usually just a dozen or less messages) and move any 'ham' back to the inbox then bulk delete the rest...

A bit of a pain, but works, and isn't that much worse than sorting out the junk from the snail mail box....

WheelyFixed