A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Banter Hall Ask Mr. Gremelin unwanted email

all of a sudden I'm receiving all types of unwanted, unsolicited email. I don't read any of it. I mark it as spam but I can't figure out how to stop it or where it's coming from. The subject appears to be advertising stuff.

That means that a site that sells email addresses got a hold of yours and sold it.
Keep on reporting as spam and deleting

k

don't get discouraged---I marked a whole site as Blocked and it took a week or more to take affect. Mine has finally stopped I am glad to say.....

OHHhh I want to do that Carol, how do you do that??

I can't figure out a specific word or subject to block.

Prevention is better than having to deal with the problem itself

Whenever a suspicious site wants my email address I always give them a random addy from http://www.mailinator.com/

Right click on the e-mail you wish to block-

then in the message/options box that comes up you will see a junk mail option.----click on it---there well be an option to add senders domain to blocked list--click on this----then the on or any other they send will be blocked

Well, there are a few ways that your email gets into these systems...
1. Your mail provider screwed you and sold your email (Hi HotMail! I know you do it, because I created a random address and left it alone for 3 months and WHAM, spam!)
2. You signed up somewhere and they sold your email address.
3. You posted your email as plain text somewhere, and a spambot noticed and logged your address.

#3 is the most common, people will post their email address on some site, and not take into account that there are search engine spiders that are malicious and exist only to get random people money by harassing other people with spam...

What do do about it? Well, you could try unsubscribing, but that generally tells them "yeh, I check my mail, and you have proof of it now" or you could try spam blocking it (works sometimes, but they can send mail from "non existent" addresses if they have the know how).

Your best bet is a spamfilter, most email systems have some sort of junkmail filter; the best of which I've found from a freemail host is GMail's filter; it works quite well on all of my email at least (though I do have the occasional trickle, I have a software filter as well lol).

How do you use Gmail's filter, James?

I have numerous words in my filter and every piece of mail I receive with it still goes into my spam box instead of being autmatically deleted, as I have set it up to do?

Well, if you're going to do keyword blocking, you have to be sure each rule has its own keyword; don't try shoving them all in the same message...

As for spam messages, if they're already filtered (by gmail before your "rules") it skips your rules and goes directly to the spam bin; which is automatically purged every 30 days (or when you click the button).

One thing to keep in mind is, some legitimate messages can contain keywords that may be blocked, so i'd advise against a direct delete when recieved...

thanks everyone.