I use Thunderbird for email. It has built-in spam detection heuristics which the user can train to his individual spam patterns by tagging misses and untagging mistaken detections. I have three gmail and two yahoo set up in T'bird, eliminates the need to log-in to five separate accounts via web portals.

We use Thunderbird and have a Comc**t address also. We rarely have spam get thru.

Less gets thru if I use the Xfinity app over Thunderbird. It sometimes is too aggressive and sends wanted emails to the trash.

I look at mine BEFORE clicking on anything. The ones I do not recognize, I click the box before opening and mark as spam. Do not use the arrow down button, it will open each one. It took a week or so, but cut way down. I only get a few now. I do have Comcast and that is our main email for any business.

I do check the spam folder for real emails before deleting and move to the in box. I do not open any in the spam folder.

Similar to those above, my web based email sends any email from an address not in my contacts to a suspect folder and not my inbox. Each day I get a report listing those emails which saves me from having to go in and individually review each one. If no action is taken then the folder automatically deletes after 7 days or so.

I ordered one thing from Microsoft's "shopping via Microsoft Start" page. The charge didn't go through until it was shipped - but within moments of the charge going through, an onslaught of spam started arriving into my junk mail folder (I use Outlook, which has always been very good at detecting spam.) I didn't make the connection for a couple of days, but once I made the connection between my purchase and the spam, I contacted Microsoft and complained (and told them I would never order anything from that page again) - the spam stopped.

The distribution of your email address could have come from many sources, as you and others have outlined.

I think the easiest approach to minimize any inconvenience is to use a mail service with robust garbage filters. I've been happy with Gmail over what's been nearly 20 years of use. I get almost no unwanted messages of a spam type. Perhaps not even one specious or unwanted one a week. Yahoo mail, slightly less capable but still pretty good. Advertisements and promotions from companies I do business with, different story. For those, one needs to unsubscribe and not block.

Note to Sherry - I've never heard of any danger from "opening" (just to read) an email message. Has anyone else? Clicking on a link, that's where the risk is. But not from reading.

I agree that Gmail is really good at filtering spam. I almost never get any spam.

I have no idea what may or may not happen on the Ebay business end, but as far as I know, Ebay sellers and buyers don't have access to each others actual email addresses. Any correspondence I've received regarding something I've purchased has arrived through the Ebay portal only, no one has ever contacted me directly at my email address I've provided for my account.

I have a GMail account that I use for things like Craiglist and other non-essential sites where I have to provide an email. I do get spam, but extremely rarely into the inbox - it filters it into the spam file, just like Outlook does. The one thing that I don't like about Gmail, though, is that when I get a spam that is clearly phishing, I do have to open the email in order to click the "report phishing" option - or to block the sender. I don't have to open the spam in Outlook, in order to report something as phishing.

That's funny, raee - in my gmail, I can just check a message to mark it as spam - no opening required.

carolb is right, you can check the box on the list of messages view and then an option to mark as spam appears.

Otherwise, you shouldn't balk at opening a message. Simply doing so involves no danger, so long as you don't click a link or anything else in the body of the message. And even then, it's not always a problem but best to avoid it.

There can be hidden images, even a single pixel, that feed in from a server that tracks whether a message was viewed. T'bird has an option to block "foreign" content from displaying unless the user opts (per message, with an option to always accept on messages from a given sender). Presumably other mail software and web-based access portals also block nowadays.

Yes I can mark an emai (in Gmail) l as spam without opening. To report it as phishing, one must open the email and then select "report phishing" from the dropdown. There is a difference. Not all spam is phishing.

Dadoes, your imagination has taken control.

Yay!

Wikipedia - Spy Pixel

How to Set an Email Tracking Pixel

How Email Tracking Pixels Work 101

How to Tell Which Emails Quietly Track You

Email Tracking Pixel to Boost Your Marketing Results

How Does Email Tracking Work on Gmail and Outlook

How to Track Email Opens in Gmail: The Ultimate Guide

Etc.

dadoes, common benign communication tools are nefarious ONLY if you want to think they are.

A simple instance - the commercial version of Gmail (widely used by major corporations and organizations) has a function to notify the sender when a message is read. It uses the same nefarious approach these articles mention. The email subsystem of a mainstream client-server software product my firm was using 20 years ago had the same functionality.

When a user opens a webpage, the host knows the visitors IP address (which suggests, not confirms) the visitor's location and certain other tidbits. So what? VPN will disguise it but why bother? If you send a letter, the recipient knows your name and address. Send a check, it's your name address, bank and account number. So what?

There are gremlins hiding behind every tree. We live our lives with risks all around. Risks can be real while being highly unlikely to happen. Lots of things are possible. Breathe deeply and be worry free.

Advice for unknown emails - feel free to open them, don't click on anything, okay to block images but not a big deal, block any repeat offenders. Sleep soundly without worry.

I had another 116 spam yesterday. *!&$^!

Seriously, take action and get a new gmail address.

Well, I found out this morning that Comcast had a major hack a couple MONTHS ago, over 30 million accounts affected. I read it on a site, Comcast never notified customers, which in my book makes it even more egregious. I wondered what was up with the password change stuff going on last month, of course phone rep didn't say a thing. So that's probably what's causing all the spam. And who knows what else.

It's like a full-time job keeping up with one's information anymore, it seems every day some major company is hacked. I put a fraud alert on my accounts because of the recent health care system breach -- a few large healthcare systems got hacked this past summer in SE Michigan.

Is the convenience of technology worth it? Call me a dinosaur, call me what you will, I don't care -- I grew up in the days before the internet and IMO no, it's not worth it. I'd gladly go back to snail mail and {gasp} waiting a week or two for something, and if somebody stole your purse yea you'd worry about losing maybe a couple hundred bucks and your credit cards, but we didn't worry about identify theft and all that for the most part. (I'm sure it happened but probably only rarely, now it's just so commonplace). We had problems, sure, but I'll take those low-tech problems any day over all this mess that's been created.

"Seriously, take action and get a new gmail address."

Yes, I definitely have to do that don't I, especially in light of the breach.