Spam Email Lesson Learned the Hard Way

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I have a rather embarrassing issue. As a computer user of many years, I do not wish to sound or be treated as though I were a dork for doing this. Please forgive me for having acted like one. I received some spam email recently that looked like it came from a legitimate domain, so I clicked the unsubscribe link in the hopes I could stop receiving it. Yes, yes, I know I should never open spam email but it appeared to be from a legitimate sender.

Indeed, the unsubscribe link pointed to what I believed was a legitimate domain name at the time. However, my spam intake has nearly doubled. While I can put up with the annoyance as my email provider accurately marks most spam, I wanted to ensure that there were no other privacy issues involved. I do not believe so, as the only piece of information I had to input was my email address. However, I am an extremely security minded individual.

Thank you for any input.

I don't think any chastisement is necessary.
"Sometimes the punishment of foolishness, is the result."~me, just now, you can quote me

As long as they only have your email address there isn't any real security risk. It is just a right royal PITA when you get deluged with spam. If your ISP is marking most of the spam mails you can set up a filter in your email software to automatically route them to trash so you won't even see them.

One useful trick is to have a throwaway email address for anything that you think may result in getting spammed. When the spam levels get intolerable you close down that address and use a different one. There are plenty of free email providers out there.

Yeah, Spam is a pain. Lately I've been getting a lot more. I don't know why, as I don't click on those unsolicited sales pitches, or the ones that say I have a package waiting, or other such messages. I also set up filters to block some terms, including ones to do with male enhancement products and male sex drugs, but for some reason the filters are not catching the stuff, even though these emails contain the words I set up in my filters. It's also not catching other key words for some of the other spam mail that I set up filters for. I think I need to complain about this to my email service. If you set up a filter to screen out "rosebud" and "rosebud" is still coming through, something is wrong with the filter program. There should also be a way right at your email service to opt out of all unsolicited email. I get plenty of stuff I did sign up for--mostly newsletters, so I don't want or need the junk email. I still don't know why the amount of Spam I'm getting has increased so much lately, because I really am good at spotting bad stuff and not clicking on it. There is a limit to the number of filters and blocks I can do, and unfortunately, these creeps just come up with slightly altered names, so they can keep on stuffing Inboxes. That is why I have been using the filters more than the blocking feature. With the filters I can use more generic terminology words that these creeps will use, when I am setting up the filter. But too much stuff is still getting through. Well, time to complain to the service provider.

The option to unsubscribe does exactly the opposite with spammers as you have just discovered. By clicking the link it tells them that (a) your email account is active and that (b) you are naive (no offence intended). So your email address has likely been sold on to other spammers and scammers who will bombard you with yet more spams, scams, trojans and viruses. Do not open any such emails and most definitely do not follow any links in such emails because they can lead to booby-trapped websites that probe your computer and browser for any unpatched vulnerabilities and can install drive-by malware, trojans and viruses without you doing anything other than visiting that site.

The only time an unsubscibe option works is after you have signed up to receive emails / newsletters etc from a legitimate company / website that you are a member of. Even then I notice it sometimes doesn't work - even with large mainstream organisations!

As already suggested, if the amount of spam becomes too annoying just dump that email address and get a new one. Personally I have around ten email addresses, each used for different things. One for friends and family, another for web forums, another for one-off contacts that may get spammed, another for the bank and so on.

If you use that email address for anything important such as banking or other financial services then I suggest you abandon the account and create a new one to use specifically for that purpose.

The one thing worse than spam getting through is false positives and legitimate emails getting blocked or deleted. I sell some shareware software and when people buy a licence I email them a registration code. Very often that email ends up in the buyers spam folder, probably because there is no history of any email communications between me and the buyer. Sometimes service providers even delete the registration email and don't even put it in the spam folder! Then I end up getting complaints from people who have bought a licence but not received an email with their registration code. My subsequent reply to them often also gets deleted by their service provider, then everyone gets pissed off.

I've done something similar, but different. I have my own domain name (costs about £3 a year) and every company or stranger I give an email address to gets their own address, e.g: amazon@<myDomainName>.co.uk
That way, if I get spam arriving at to that address I block the address at the server AND know who sold my address to a list.
A benefit of doing it this way is that all my email is received to my REAL email address (one mailbox) while NOBODY else ever knows my real address.

This is a great solution that I've always used. I have three email addresses: One for business and other formal or offical purposes, one for friends and family, and one to use for any site or address that I feel I might get spammed from (games, open groups, online shopping, etc.)

Considering the fact that I've had the email account in question for over a decade now, it'd be a little difficult to get rid of it. However, I changed up the password and the password to every web account that used the email account. The service provider of that particular account seems to have picked up most of the spam now, and the filter software is working well. I just have to empty the spam folder for the time being. It certainly seems as though everything is somewhat copasetic for the time, and as was said before I don't believe any information was leaked besides my email address.

Since the passwords were changed, I don't think I have much to worry about. Let me know if anyone sees some flaw in my logic. I've also made sure my address isn't sending out any strange messages as well.

I know the feeling of getting false positives all too well. I've lost very important emails to over aggressive ISP-side filters in the past. It's extremely annoying, and difficult to circumvent. I've also gotten spam that uses regular text copied and pasted into the body text to try and circumvent a spam filter. Just today I got one that copied text from an article in the Columbia Encyclopedia. I bet they picked that source because it's easily searched on Yahoo! Reference and Answers.com.

I have multiple email accounts myself, and follow this pattern. It just seems that one of the important ones got flooded.

Yes, that works really well. I do it myself. It can be very useful to track people who sell on your email address to spammers. You'd think they would get the hint when the email address uses the domain name shootspammers.org.uk!

I doubt any humans manually scavenge email addresses nowadays, it is all automated with bots and they don't care what the domain name is provided they can spam it.

What you do is make a list of the spammer's email addresses in notepad, or whatever text editor that you have, hit the 'unsubscribe' link and enter all the spammers email addresses into the the box to unsubscribe. --What this does is give the spammers a whole bunch of dead email addresses that will bounce from the mail servers that they send emails to and will clutter their inboxes, causing them to spam themselves.