Junk email help
 

My email has been hacked and I am getting hundreds (literally) of junk emails each day. They all go to my junk email folder and are easy to delete, but … is there any way of stopping them altogether? I am using gmail.

There's not a lot that can be done.

That said, find any "legit" sender and unsubscribe. I mean, real companies that you may have signed up for years ago. I finally unsubbed from JC Penny. Got subbed for an order years back, finally realized I don't read it and they honored the unsub.

That said, your run of the mill spammer not only won't honor an unsub, they will give it to you harder, now they know they have a real person on the line.

Just click the spam button for the junk and it will get better over time.

If they are going to your junk folder though, just don't look at it :)

Why not get another email address, and notify the people who you want to have it?

Thought of that, but besides all my contacts I would have to notify credit cards, bank, businesses, etc. Not a simple task.

Than be prepared to delete lots and lots of junk mail

It would be a very simple task for me. But, if it wouldn't for you, it may be well worth the effort to review and organize your important contacts.

You gave you’re email address to site that sells or passes on emails. ( example wholesale hot tubes . Com, item you’re interested in out or stock, send email alert when item comes in stock)( you now just got hacked and you’re email address on World Wide Web) You will be getting hundreds spam from around world. Before you give you email read their agreements, some where in the pages of fine print it will say they will share/sell your email to partners.

Yep I agree or change your email address, your choice.

Better yet, stay off those porn sites.

Gmail’s junk folder seems to be working as designed since your spam messages end up there for you. You cannot stop spammers from sending those messages.

I rarely look in my junk folder and leave the spam messages there without emptying the folder.

By the way, unsubscribing to a spam message from an unknown sender may result in more, not less, spam messages because you have just confirmed your email address is actively read. Email addresses are sold commercially to spammers and the sellers want to sell addresses that are active.

the task is actually fairly easy You log on to your account and change the contact information. Nothing else has to be done , just because you change an email address doesn't mean these places need "official" notification.

With that said, the effort to rid yourself of junk email is fairly straight forward, however the underlying problem is what makes it difficult.

I'm not going to start giving online forum internet security lessons, especially in this mass of opinion posts. I'm not going to talk my background on here either, however it highly qualifies to consult in this area. I am willing to respond to emails on this site, as long as they are practical (read: to the point not time consuming I work FT)

Never heard of email address being hack. Any email you don't want don't just send it to junk you must label it as junk. Then you'll never see it again.

This may help those who are negatively impacted by spam and junk mail with Gmail :
Gmail Spam Filter: How It Works and How to Customize It

Some browsers have spam controls with varying degrees of success. Most likely, you'll eventually give up and change your email address.

I don’t count my junk mail but I’m sure it’s over 100 very few manage to get to my regular email . I don’t feel it’s much of a problem to get upset about , it takes maybe 2 seconds trash to the ones from gmail and another 2 to delete the junk folder , why do people make things sound harder and more of a problem then it is

I think there may be some confusion:
Hacked they have access to your email and can read /edit or send things that look like it comes from you. This is dangerous and if this is the case you should create a new email and share it with your legit contacts/institutions.

Your email has been obtained and you are getting hit with a large volume of spam email. Digital version of Junk mail. This is not hacked, this is you put your email somewhere and the spammer got a hold of it and are selling it. Annoying but not dangerous.

Mine have increased since changing Medicare plans.

Hacks from hotels?
 

I am the original poster. I am 100% sure that I have not given my address to a suspicious entity. I recently traveled and used the hotels' unsecure wifi to check my emails. Of course I don’t use those wifis for sensitive issues, but can email be hacked in those situations?

I just heard about this site/app yesterday to help with junk mail. It's called Unroll Me. It apparently helps unsubscribe you from all the junk mail.

Unsubscribe from emails, instantly - Unroll.Me

I don't know about gmail, I know yahoo emails get hacked a LOT. I've had a hotmail account for over 30 years, and have never had my account hacked. Maybe change to another email? Let your friends and family know of the change, put the email address change as your signature so everyone will see it. Then you'll only have to check your gmail occasionally for other emails.

The default connection to gmail is via https or a secured version connection. You have to fiddle with connection settings in your browser to turn that off. There is no reason to turn that off unless you're on a WiFi connection that's trying to snoop on you. In the past, some public wifi may have prevented secure connections, but I seriously doubt any of them do it today.

There should also be a lock or symbol of some kind, it's different on different browsers, next to the URL address at the top. This means you are secure from your computer to google. No one can snoop on that.

Of course, it's possible that when you're on an open WiFi, that someone else could break into your computer, but frankly, that's beyond the skill is almost everyone and unless you've really opened up your computer intentionally, this is not something to worry about.

You can always block them by using the 3 dot pull down menu just to the right of the email.. That helps, but it's just like the spam and telemarketer stuff on our phones. It's just really an ongoing task to block them all. : )

I’m in the same boat. My junk e-mail was up over 3000 the other day. Takes longer than a few seconds to look through for possible info I need and to delete that many unwanted emails. Some were coming 6 at a time right in a row😤

I keep a separate email address for banking, credit cards. Rarely disclose these, no spam problem on them. If I have to change my shopping or personal email it's easier.

Interesting thread, I have the same problem as the OP, way too much spam mail showing up in my junk folder. It’s kind of a pain is the butt. I have a Comcast email account and my browser is Safari. Wondering if anyone else with that set-up has found a way to block all the spam mail without having to change their email?

I get over a hundred of junk emails a day. They all go into my junk folder. Sounds like your spam folder is doing what it is supposed to do.

I am doing the same thing.
I set up a new email only for financial/banking/utility's sites and no spam or junk mail.

One question:
Should I be deleting my spam folder in my old e-mail in Gmail or leave it build up?

Do not. Delete spam/junk mail from the folder!
This is how the gmail program identifies the junk/spam.

But can/should I remove the junk mail that's already in the folder, was my question

Ohiobuckeye
 

Don’t get on group emails! Friends send what they think is a funny or neat emails to people you don’t know, & you might of said something that someone wants so you get hacked, plus you really don’t know if some of these people have a lot viruses & they pass there viruses on to you, then this virus could open your bank accounts. So if really don’t want to get hacked, quit emailing. Eventually every country in the world will know your business. It’s coming!

if you identify that it all is junk then yes. if you want to improve on that then dump gmail which will stop some of your problems

It is never a good idea to connect to an open wifi you find even if it says McDonalds or Hilton-Guest. For a few hundred dollars a bad actor can buy a small device that advertises a fake wifi signal that you connect to. You think everything is ok because they pass you through to the real open wifi. This is called a man-in-the-middle attack. Every username and password you type in can be captured even if it is a strong password.

With Gmail, you can setup two factor authentication (2FA) which is using your password and something like a text code to your phone or better yet is an authentication app like Google Authenticator app. Without both, no one can login to your account.

All of this security is free. I know it is easier to just use just a password and usually the same password for multiple logins, but you set yourself up for a problem sometime in the future. A little inconvenience now, will save you a ton of inconvenience in the future.

Good advice, which almost no one will use.

I agree with most of your post except the bolded. If you are on a secure connection to a website via https, no one is snooping on your link even on an open wifi connection. Gmail, every bank, and in fact every real website uses security certificates.

Could they use wireshark and read the packet header to see what site the https request goes to? Sure. Not much they can do with that information. It's just encrypted garbage after that point.

I just got up at 9:30 and just for fun while having coffee I counted my junk mail there were 137 and 9 in my Gmail I knocked the 9 out of my Gmail then thrashed all the junk mail with one stroke , maybe took all of 5 seconds, people see a problem , where there is no problem FYI if by chance a legitimate email was in that mess so be it , it couldn’t have been very important because I didn’t miss anything I should have received

If you look at any site such as Amazon, Sam's club, etc, Then your info saves to your cookies. And then it goes out to the whole world to use...
:ohdear::ohdear:

Only mail i get nowadays is junk mail

If you buy your own domain name through a low-cost registrar like Namecheap, you can get inexpensive email from them that includes a very powerful spam filter at their server level, so it never reaches you. Then you can log in to their server and exclude all the additional sender addresses you want to and those will never reach your desktop email either. You will need Outlook or a similar desktop (“client”) program to download your email to your desktop. And you will have your own domain name forever as long as you pay the monthly fee. For example, if your name is Sally Smith you could buy a domain name like Smith-Florida.com and set Sally@Smith-Florida.com as your email address and get very little spam even if you mistakenly gave your email address to a spammer. My email address has been published on my website for over 20 years, and when I was working my site had many pages and got around 200 visitors per day, but using my domain name email, I get almost no spam and never have.

Exactly:coolsmiley:

some email will automatically delete spam files after 'x' amount of days. i think you may be able to control how many days

If you are willing to spend a little more time setting things up you can get a personalized domain (about $15 per year) and then set up multiple email accounts using that domain which all forward to your regular (primary) email address that you only give to friends. That way you only have to check one email account.

For instance, you could set up banking@your_domain.com and use that one for your various banking and brokerage accounts, shopping@your_domain.com for retail accounts, etc. If one of them started to show up on a large amount of spam you could delete it and create a new one for those accounts (i.e. bankaccts@your_domain.com) That way you won't have to change your email account info on too many online accounts at a time.

OR you can just skim the messages in your junk folder once a day to make sure nothing legitimate is in there and then delete them all. As Charlie said, it only takes a few seconds.

k.