Mailbox flooded with emails ?

[novkhan]

Mailbox flooded with emails ?
Goodday.

Everytime my friend click the send and recieve button, she would recieve 40 over mails from ppl she dun noe with attachment attached to it.

How am i gona help her out, filtering those annoying emails.

Most likely the PC is infected With virus rite ?

OS: Win 98

[annihilator_god]

Most likely, there are other computers infected with a virus. Your friend's e-mail address is probably in the address book of the infected machines.

Have your friend head to http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ for a free online virus checkup.
You could also pick up norton antivirus 2004 which has e-mail virus checking automatically built in.

As for filtering these e-mails, just delete them... It's typically good practice to never accept (or open) an attachment unless you (the user) are expecting it. You can also probably set the e-mail client to automatically decline downloading any attachments.

Happy virus hunting

[nihil]

OK

If she doesn't know them how do they have her e-mail address?

The possibility is that the computers of people she does know have become infected with malware that "spoofs" the sender's address, most probably at random from e-mails that they have received or from their address book. OR it is just plain SPAM?

My first move would be to go to another provider and create a new e-mail account, and be VERY CAREFUL who I gave that address to. Do not post it on chat rooms or give it out to enter "competitions" or get "free gifts"..............create a separate account for that preferably with yet another e-mail provider or as a separate account........NOT a subordinate of a proper account.

You do not say what the subject matter of the e-mails is, so it is hard to tell whether it is virus or spam. Are they actually addressed to her, with her proper account name?

Some mail providers allow you to set up filter rules so that if the mail is not directly for your account it will divert it to a "spam folder" Otherwise you need to analyse the mail headers and set the local filter to kill mails with headers containing key words:

Win
Congratulations
Viagra
Penis
Loan
Consolidate
Debt
Holiday

Those are local English examples that I use of course.

As she has probably opened some of this crap, I would run Housecall from Trend Micro, and check for viruses on her machine.

Make sure that she has an up to date AV and firewall and keeps them that way. Follow the advice in various tutorials on this site on hardening the machine.

If she is getting that many she is being far too promiscuous with her e-mail address.

Where she needs to give it on a website or whatever, at least try:

xyzREMOVEME@mymail.com

That will fool the spambots, and anyone not intelligent enough to know what to do probably won't have anything to say that you would be interested in anyway? You need to be careful with subscriptions though, as they use mailbots, so you have to give them a "clean" and correct address. Set up an account just for this.

I think that the most important thing is that she gets a mail provider that allows filtering at source, and that these filters are set.

It can be very painful watching 1500 items of spam download over a 56.6 dial up connection



Good luck

[Nokia]

Does she use outlook express or outlook? Or something completely different to get her e-mails?

[novkhan]

Originally posted here by Nokia
Does she use outlook express or outlook? Or something completely different to get her e-mails?

outlook express

[krp]

hi,
the email id is provided by her accidently in free news letters,other subscriber's etc
redirect all mails to a folder created in the mail.
better solution is to create a new mail id .
don't provide it to any entertainment website's .
have a nice day

[z31200n3]

god bless the spammers!

[aze]

One of my favorite methods of getting rid of annoying spam is to use throwaway forwarding accounts such as www.spamgourmet.com. This allows you to create as many throw away forwarding accounts as you want, and if one of them begins to receive too much spam you just kill it. Spam gourmet also offers a simple self destruct feature too, where you set up a forwarding address to die out after x email. I can say I am very pleased with this service, and I receive next to no spam on the account my mail is forwarded too. (This is probably not the best thing to use on your friends, but it works for everything else )

My two pesos

[therenegade]

everytime she clicks on send/recieve?If thats the case it sounds like malware...but if she's just getting a lot of email everyday,its just plain old spam,or some obliging friend signed her up for free lists,try getting a new email id and see if that works for the time being,if it's subscription crap thats coming to her,she's going to have to unsubscribe..takes a LOT of time..also,is she getting mails from the same addresses or are they different?

[SwordFish_13]

Originally posted here by therenegade
she's going to have to unsubscribe

Hi

Don't even think of doing that ......It is Sometimes a trick of verifing that the Account is Active or not not and you will Receive Even More Spam Mails after they veryfy that this is a active account... The best Solution is to get a new Account it's free..And keep in mind a few things

• Do now Subscruibe to the Free Offers that are Provided During the Account Creation ... Check Them out They are generally Checked By default.. So go and Un-Check Them.
  
• Some Web sites require you to sign up with a valid e-mail address to access their services. Do not Give your Primary ID.. Use tow or three ID's
  
• Do not Indulge in Chain Mails They are good Source of Getting E-mail Accout.
  
• If you have a website and want to provide your E-Mail on that site write in like "SwordFish at Hotmail Dot Com"
  
• Never Click On the Advertiseing on the Top and Side of the Mail Box.. They are a real Source of Spam. I had a Virtually Sapm Free Account For almost 6 months now ... Until i accediently clicked on the Top Add.. Gif and now i have almose 66-70 Spam Mails everyday
  
• Never Click On the unsubscribe Links provided On the Spam Mails... They Will Invite New Spam
  
• Get a new acount.. There is no way Around....

There are a Few Techniques of Protection Against Spam They Are not Foorl Proof But work To some Extent like Content filtering ,,Blocking By e-mail ID and Blocking by The Server name.. You can use both techniques in Conjunction with each other . there are various Spam Blocking Software you can use SpamAssassin, SpamKiller, ScanMail eManager,VisNetic MailScan, Merak E-Mail Server, Alligate, ESafe, SpamCop, MailProtector Never used them so don't ask memyself. I just create a new Account.


Here is good OUTLOOK™ SPAM TUTORIAL Which guides you Step By step how to det up Rules In outlook Express

--Good Luck--