Tons of Junk Emails

[Reen]

All of a sudden, this past week, I have been getting tons of "junk" emails into my incoming Junk email folder. 20-30 at a time. I clear them out, then next time I go to my mailbox, I have another 20-30.  Some titles are from legit businesses, like American Airlines.  I do not recall signing up for any different or strange website recently. Where is this coming from and why does this Malwarebytes product stop these?

[alvarnell]

I suspect you will find your answer at https://haveibeenpwned.com/. Some site you trusted with your email address was hacked to harvest probably thousands and sold the address list on the dark web to professional spammers. Or maybe you left your email address on a phishing site.

Although the "From: " address may be showing you a legit business, that's quite easily faked and doesn't tell you where it actually originated from. Services such as SpamCop can read the headers and determine the actual source if you are interested, and will optionally inform the senders ISP so they can hopefully take the sender down.

Malwarebytes products are designed to prevent malware infections and might be able to prevent you from visiting a known phishing site that wants to steal your credentials, but you'll need to purchase a different product that specializes in email filtering such as SpamSieve to do what you are looking for.

[Reen]

Ah, thanks....thought I was "careful"...but messed up just once can be the negative. Thank you for this input and I certainly will look into this...and create a different email for "exploring"...🙃

[1PW]

Hello @Reen:

You may wish to investigate the use of a “disposable” email address:

https://10minutemail.com/

HTH

[brcd]

On 2/18/2023 at 6:52 AM, alvarnell said:

I suspect you will find your answer at https://haveibeenpwned.com/. Some site you trusted with your email address was hacked to harvest probably thousands and sold the address list on the dark web to professional spammers. Or maybe you left your email address on a phishing site.

Although the "From: " address may be showing you a legit business, that's quite easily faked and doesn't tell you where it actually originated from. Services such as SpamCop can read the headers and determine the actual source if you are interested, and will optionally inform the senders ISP so they can hopefully take the sender down.

Malwarebytes products are designed to prevent malware infections and might be able to prevent you from visiting a known phishing site that wants to steal your credentials, but you'll need to purchase a different product that specializes in email filtering such as SpamSieve to do what you are looking for.

alvarnell - Thanks for the link. My email was pawned.  Legit sites either selling or were hacked (everyone needs a hobby). Cell not pawned. Adding the site to my favorites.