Over the past month or so, an alarming number of spam messages have been showing up in my Yahoo! email account (with only a fraction of them getting automatically filtered into the Junk/Bulk folder). They are all coming from different addresses, they all have one-word subject lines like "cheque" or "proposal" or "alert," and there is no text in the message at all, but rather a zipped file is attached.
Helloooooo, spammers!?!? Did you just arrive from the year 1998? Everyone knows not to open zip files (or any attachment for that matter) from bizarre senders such as "Mat Q. Morino" and "Butler Clary" and the like. Hell, I don't even open attachments from people I do know most of the time.
So while I simply delete these messages immediately and am therefore not going to be lured into some lame virus attack or unwittingly help the Prince of Nigeria transfer his millions into a U.S.-based bank account or get a really great deal on Viagra, the fact that I have to even see these messages in my Inbox for a matter of seconds is still annoying the crap out of me. I'm thinking I'm all popular when I come home and see 33 messages rollin' in, and then 28 of them are these crazy spam attempts, 2 are "Hot Deals" from both American Airlines and Expedia, one is a reminder from Peapod about my upcoming grocery delivery, one is the shipment status for a wedding gift I just ordered, and only one lonely message is from an actual live friend (shout-out to CM!).
The bigger problem here is that I don't want to switch email addresses and just start fresh - that would be like letting the spammers triumph! Plus, both of my blogs are tied to my yahoo address, even though blogger itself is tied to a gmail.com email address (long story). So, I'm going to wait it out and see if this recent uptick in spam gets any better or not before I make any rash decisions.
Has this been happening to anyone else? I am even getting similar messages at my work account, which just started happening. Companies usually employ pretty fierce spam and virus protection tools, so I figured there has to be some sort of new technique that is being used in order to break through to corporate email accounts. When I find out what that technique is, I will tell all of you and then we can launch a counter-attack on the eleven-year-old whiz kid who is undoubtedly behind this - probably sitting in his basement somewhere on the outskirts of Seattle, writing code and using it for eeeevil.
WE WILL FIND YOU, you little brat! Cease and desist before we use your methods against you!
- e
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
What is UP with the spam barrage lately?
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3 comments:
ah its happening with me too. my yahoo account is my oldest email account,
i already got used to the nigerian emails... but then the spam increased i got tired.
i use now a gmail account as my main account, for emails from friends and work.
and i keep my yahoo account for things internet-related.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I was JUST telling emmet that for some reason over the past 3 days I have gotten a ton of random emails with zip files. Dear God, they are SOOO annoying. I've had my hotmail account for maybe 10 years so to switch would be very involved.
ta ta,
Kristina
I thought it was just me! I've been so fed up w/ Yahoo lately b/c of it that I'm trying out gmail instead. So far, no spam! A switch seems daunting but I hate that 80% of my emails lately have been spam.
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