I have found that for a guaranteed instant fix, change your email address and password. If you do this, you will never be sorry. Thanks for listening

What email is it?

Have you upped the spam filter on it?

You may have to check your trash regularly, but maybe it will help in time.

I have Hotmail, and I get a few occasionally, and then 'none' for a long time.

Sue

email for stocks, sex junk, travel etc. What do you mean up my spam filter. I added an Outlook rule that says delete anything with SPAM in the Subject line.....none of these annoying email do though. Its also a hassle to change an email address, almost as much as changing my phone number. There must be something to do?

I get these on my fax but calling those numbers has worked. Contact your ISP for help in filtering out these spams. Mine filters out those emails that have tons of names on them, so even friends that like to forward all those daily jokes are now filtered out. I don't mind though, they usually have no personal messages in them.

You might consider getting a disposable email address (Yahoo, Hotmail et al) for anything and everything except family and friends. Anything you need to register for goes in this address then if after a while it starts to get bogged down with Spam simply abandon it and create a new disposable address.

Those Spams that arrive? Simply delete them without opening them and move on, you cannot stop them sadly.

What do you mean up my spam filter?

I have Hotmail and can choose the level of Protection.
I click on Options
Junk Email Protection
Junk Email Filter
Then there are 3 choices of Low,Obvious junk email is caught (that is what mine is set at)
Enhanced, most junk e-mail is caught
or
Exclusive.you will only receive e-mail from addresses appearing in your Contacts, service announcements from Hotmail, and messages you have consented to receive from MSN.

Sue

This down not eliminate your junk mail, but helps to manage it. Do not download the stuff to your computer. Instead, log into your Web sever's mail utility and review your mail there. Delete the obvious unwanted - don't open it! Even though you may not respond to an email, the mere act of 'opening it' may trigger return information back to the sender to the effect, "this is a bonifide addresss" and will surely generate more junk. After a few weeks of dumping the unwanted junk, it dimishes because the sender does not get any positive feedback.

After you have culled your 'inbox' at your ISP provider's site, return to you personal mail utility and download the remaining messages. This reduces the big load of junk downloaded to your computer.

While logged into the Web Site, you can look at some of the big and awful messages some of your correspondents keep on insisting to send to you like 2 meg-bytes of graphics. Read it and toss if you don't intend to keep - maybe compose a short reply. This way, this piece of litter stays out of your computer and doesn't clog up a slow phone connetion for you dial-up users.

This procedure does not eliminate the junk, but helps to manage it.

I agree with the above instructions and if you have Comcast cable, you can report the messages as spam so that they will block them in the future at server level.

I have five email addresses with Comcast and get very little spam/junk other than the dang forwards some people insist on sending out.......

How you get SPAM...

To begin with the bad guys send SPAM because that's how they make money, it's their job, it's how they make a living... We're talking millions of dollars here... A lot of spammers are very good at what they do and work extremely hard finding viably e-mail addresses.

First off they have programs that search the internet, day and night, 24/7, checking every site and web page for anything that resembles an e-mail address... If you've posted your e-mail anywhere on the internet it's on a SPAM list somewhere... When I say anywhere I mean anywhere, on your own web page, in a Guestbook, on a forum post, MySpace, a blog, anywhere it can be seen it can be grabbed by a spammer.

They also have programs that generate names for e-mail addresses, anything that can be found in a dictionary, telephone book, lists of baby names, lists of nick names and such... Anyone who has an internet connection can get a list of all the internet providers in the world... So all they have to do is tell the program to use those names with those providers... Instant SPAM list.

Years ago my dial up provider gave their customers FREE web sites... To keep track of all the sites the provider used the customers e-mail addresses as the site names and then posted the list of the sites on the home page... Instant SPAM list.... ( Fortunately they've seen the error of their ways... lol )

Ever sign up for anything FREE on the internet or even registered purchased items and they asked if you wanted to be on their mailing list... Yep, instant SPAM list... Well not all the time but if you don't specify what kind of mail you want from them your address can end up on a SPAM list ( especially the FREE stuff ).

Ever get a Forwarded e-mail from a friend with a zillion e-mail addresses in it that tells you to add your name to the list and send it to 10 of your friends... Yep, and if you Forward it, you just created another SPAM list.

Ever get mail and you weren't quite sure who it was from or the Subject sounded interesting so you Opened it anyway.. Yep!!! You just added your address to an A #1 golden SPAM list because they know it's a good address and they can sell it to other spammers.

Those are a just some of the ways they get your address... So what's the answer... Well, get a new address, pick something no one can guess with lots of letters with numbers mixed in, don't give it out to anyone, create a message rule that sends all your mail to the trash and you MAY stop the SPAM for a week or two... lol

Seriously though, never, ever reply to SPAM or click on the links to be removed from their list unless you're absolutely positively sure who sent it... Sometimes reporting them to your internet provider works but after you report the first 100 or so your IP may get a little testy (lol)... Your best bet is to just delete them without opening... Sooner or later they'll slow down...

Get a free e-mail account to use for registering for stuff, your internet friends and stuff like that... Only use the e-mail account from your internet provider for family and really close computer savvy friends... BTW, Rules to block e-mail addresses or IP's won't work because they use phony addresses... But, you could make a Rule like this.... Where the from line contains people not in my address book, Delete from Server... But the problem with that is if your friends change their e-mail address before telling you their mail won't get through, same goes for replies from any mail you send out to people not in your address book...

Rita

Nice post Rita

Everyone and anyone who does not fully understand what Rita has written should read it twice and very carefully. To a degree we are all responsible for some of our Spam

I agree with all the above; however, I have been using computers at a relatively sophisticated level since 1985 and still get caught occasionally. I ditched my original email address about 15 years ago and was doing great with a new one until last summer. I screwed up and know exactly what I did but all that was water under the bridge. All of a sudden I was getting a LOAD of SPAM daily. I searched around and found MailWasher, the free version, and started using that. I used it for about 3 weeks with a slight improvement to my current email account. Then I downloaded the free 30-day free trial of the MailWasher Pro version. Suddenly my SPAM stopped! Well, it never stops, but compared to what I was getting, I am getting nothing anymore. I went to my old email address and found 5,000 SPAM messages. Using MailWasher Pro I deleted all of them in a few minutes. Did the same with my wife's and daughter's accounts. Now I have MailWasher looking at the four accounts every 5 minutes. The accounts are now getting about 6-10 SPAM messages (total) per day, down from about 100 (total) per day. When the trial period is over and I'm asked to pay the $37, I'm going for it. This is the first helpful software I've seen since my first account was compromised.

Why is MailWasher different from using the SPAM filter on your email client? MailWasher bounces and deletes the messages directly from your ISP's server before you download them. The bounce message goes to the sender and tells him that youraddress@yourisp.com is not a valid address. The message it sends looks exactly like the "real" message your ISP would send if yours was not really a valid address. The free version of the program does not have the bounce capability. I would suggest trying the free version for a couple days to get familiar with it and then go for the Pro version. Your SPAM may stop altogether in a few days.

I know I sound like a troll but I'm just passing along my experience. When I find something that works, I'm not afraid to praise it.

Thank you for the complement Owbist... I can't tell you the number of times I've found your replies, to others, to be very helpful for me... Thank you for that too.

Rita

I would be a trillionaire if I were to believe the spam I receive. I have won every lottery in Britain, etc.

I think I know what I looked up on the internet prior to this spam starting. But at the same time, I started using the new version of Yahoo Mail, the upgrade from the Classic version. When I click on each line, the complete e-mail pops up. Attachments still have to be opened. Could this be causing my spam problems? Would it be better to go back to the Classic version because, if I remember correctly, I would have to open each e-mail in order to read it?