Spam

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Usually I don't get any junk email because my ISP does a great job of filtering it out on the server end. But now I'm getting about 10 a day - the sender's name is always a person's first and last name, different name every time, and it's a different subject line every time. The message body always looks the same though, just different text in it. And it says it's coming from a different email address every time, so blocking the sender doesn't do any good. Anyone heard of this? I'm wondering if it's even some sort of a virus or something. Is there anything I can do to stop it (aside from changing my email address)?

Unfortunately, not much. The new way spammers are getting through filters is by putting enough content into the message to make it look like a legitimate message. Somewhere in the message is the thing they are trying to sell. Newer SPAM blockers are doing analysis to see if a paragraph is actual reasonably formed English, since most spammers right now just put in random words.

One thing you can do is to download Thunderbird from http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/. You can mark those messages as "Junk Mail" and it will add another levelling of filtering on to your messages. Still, using both Yahoo! Mail filtering and Thunderbird filtering, I still have to deal with about that many messages as well.

A good resource to learn more about SPAM is here:

http://www.spamprimer.com/

Thanks for the suggestions.

Somehow your email address was captured and placed onto a spammers list, and then shared with other spammers. This can happen in multiple ways. The most common way is if you publish your email address on a website. Or if there is a website which asks you for your email address and you enter it and then they sell it to spammers.

It is impossible to get your email address removed from these spam lists. The only way is to change your email address, which is a hassle, yes, but at least it stops the spam, and in future you can be extra careful about protecting your email address.

A good technique is to have 2 email addresses -- one you use in risky situations (such as if a website asks you for your email address), and the other email address you only give to trusted friends/family.

The weird thing with the stuff I'm getting though is that all the messages look the same - same format for the text with a colored background. Parts of the text are the same too (same wording), parts are different. They look like they're all coming from one source even though it says the addresses are different.