For the last 20 years I've been fortunate enough to able to avoid getting hit with a lot of spam. Actually, up until about 9 months ago I might get 1 spammy email twice a month. I mean, really, I thought I was blessed. I've never received a Nigerian Prince email. Nothing like that at all. But then, about 9 months ago they started creeping in. Now I'm up to about 10-20 a week. I'm using Thunderbird and it's catching all of them but it still seems weird that I went so long without virtually any spam emails and now I'm being hit. The one thing that stands out the most is that some of this spam is going into an email address that I basically don't even use.
I'm not sure where the breach was. I do know that about in the same time span I've been corresponding with a couple of the grandkids who are starting with college and I'm thinking that there security protocols on their computers aren't really up to snuff. But what get's me is that all 3 of my ISPs email addresses seem to be getting hit more and more often.
I'm starting to get a lot of Spam
Re: I'm starting to get a lot of Spam
It is also possible that your email address was part of some leak/security breach at your ISP, a department store, or any other place that ever saw your email addy.
Once spam starts creeping in, there is no stopping it, just filtering emails.
My account has been bombarded with spam as I've used it for over 20 years and it was visible for harvesting, and downloaded from big security breaches at Facebook/HomeDepot/Equifax/EBay (to name a few, lol).
I do have the benefit of filtering spam at the server level, where mails get categorized as spam and moved before reaching my mailbox, it is very effective but at times there is a false-positive spam designation, or some spam email creeps through, as with any automated solution. This is why many people use gmail, or other commercial solutions that have good anti-spam filters in place these days.
Once spam starts creeping in, there is no stopping it, just filtering emails.
My account has been bombarded with spam as I've used it for over 20 years and it was visible for harvesting, and downloaded from big security breaches at Facebook/HomeDepot/Equifax/EBay (to name a few, lol).
I do have the benefit of filtering spam at the server level, where mails get categorized as spam and moved before reaching my mailbox, it is very effective but at times there is a false-positive spam designation, or some spam email creeps through, as with any automated solution. This is why many people use gmail, or other commercial solutions that have good anti-spam filters in place these days.
Re: I'm starting to get a lot of Spam
^^ Yeah, I realize there isn't any way to really nail it down and there would be no use in researching it further. It's just sort of sad, I went for so so long being virtually spam free. My wife's gmail account is one that gets hit probably 20 times a day, it's a mess.