email filtering

[ayjay]

My emails come to my PC through Idnet using the SMTP/POP3 service. I use Thunderbird as my email programme.

I deleted one of my email addresses about four or five years back because it was attracting about 4-500 spam emails every week.

It's replacement address has slowly built up to about 15 or 20 spam emails per day, every day, without fail.

In the last two days I've not had one.

I'm quite happy with that situation as I resent having to go through all the spam (very briefly) to check that my increasing multitude of word/phrase based filters hasn't caught something it wasn't intended for.

Has Idnet started to filter emails before they get to me?

[ayjay]

Has Idnet started to filter emails before they get to me?

Top Secret?

Nobody else noticed any difference in their levels of spam?

Mine are still minimal, five in the last five days, I can cope with that.

[Simon]

I've noticed the opposite.  In recent days / weeks, I've been receiving an increasing number of spam emails to two of my IDNet accounts.  What's worrying, is that most of these seem to have attachments, which would presumably be malicious, and cause a lot of problems if opened.  I haven't been using IDNet's spam filtering, but I may turn this on to see if it makes much difference, as this is now becoming beyond nuisance level.

[ayjay]

I've noticed the opposite.  In recent days / weeks, I've been receiving an increasing number of spam emails to two of my IDNet accounts.  What's worrying, is that most of these seem to have attachments, which would presumably be malicious, and cause a lot of problems if opened.  I haven't been using IDNet's spam filtering, but I may turn this on to see if it makes much difference, as this is now becoming beyond nuisance level.

Mine is still at minimal levels, not even into double figure yet in the last week, I can live with that.

If it's nothing that Idnet are doing differently I can only conclude that the sender has been busted, or hopefully died a slow and painful death somewhere.

I'm somewhat surprised at the possibility that it may all have been coming from one source as it was a very diverse mix of garbage, some sex stuff,  fake invoices (usually complete with virus), fake parcel deliveries, etc etc.

[Simon]

Yes, sounds like the same as I'm getting.  I get them to two accounts simultaneously, and the only place that I have used those two accounts together, is on eBay. So, I suspect that an eBay seller has been selling on his customers email addresses.

[zappaDPJ]

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love sent to me... approximately 25 unpaid invoices, voice mails and WhatsApp messages. 3 unintelligible emails in Arabic. A tax refund for £265.84 GBP from HM Revenue and Customs. A warning of unusual activity on my Apple account. The suspension of my PayPal account. Important information about my my Amazon order but not a single advert for Viagra

I think it's time for a new email address.

[Simon]

I'm starting to think that too - but I like the ones I've got, and don't see why I should be driven from them.   

[zappaDPJ]

It's annoying and time consuming but the ratio of spam to genuine mail I'm receiving is now well over 100 to 1.

[Glenn]

I forward my email to a gmail account, it filters far better than idnet, also splits out social & promotional mails.

[Simon]

I worry about automatic filtering, as one of the affected accounts is connected to my work, and it would just be my luck to miss the one email that I actually wanted.

[colirv]

I use Fastmail. My spam filter is set so that "known insecure email hosts/relays" are automatically blocked, any other suspected spam (currently 1 email in every 20) is moved to a Junk Mail folder which Thunderbird also retrieves and where I can read it and deal with it appropriately.