Help - being bombarded by spam emails

[deniser]

I am now being bombarded by spam emails which don't get caught by any filters. I am just reporting them and deleting them but there are hundreds and it's preventing me from doing any work!

I have reported them to the hosting company (which forwards them) and individually to Gmail but they keep coming.

Problem is they are all from and to different email addresses and have a unique heading and inside the message is just junk wording.

How can I stop them?

 

[zigojacko]

You use Gmail's mail servers and you're getting hammered with spam??

There's a first.

Google are the best company to combat spam, if they haven't filtered it out before it reaches you then there isn't a great deal you can do other than manually marking as spam and moving to junk.

I'd be inclined to think that you have got a configuration incorrect somewhere or you are in fact not going through Gmail for your mail.

 

[deniser]

I'd be inclined to think that you have got a configuration incorrect somewhere or you are in fact not going through Gmail for your mail.

How is it possible not to go through Gmail when I have the Gmail inbox page open?!

 

[deniser]

You use Gmail's mail servers and you're getting hammered with spam??

There's a first.

Yes it's a first for me too!

 

[zigojacko]

How is it possible not to go through Gmail when I have the Gmail inbox page open?!

It isn't. If you use the Gmail web interface then it is pretty conclusive that you're using Google's mail servers

 

[zigojacko]

If you're running through Google Apps, I'd tighten up your spam filtering. If you aren't running through Google Apps, then nothing you can do.

 

[deniser]

If you're running through Google Apps, I'd tighten up your spam filtering. If you aren't running through Google Apps, then nothing you can do.

I haven't had one for over 10 minutes so maybe it has stopped now? Horrible waste of time!

 

[deniser]

Oh no, there's another one. But at least they are slowing down!

 

[zigojacko]

Moving to Google Apps for business email was the best thing we ever did to help reduce spam. In fact, we very rarely receive spam in comparison now and what we do receive 95% of the time, will automatically be sent to the spam folder.

 

[Banksbroo]

OP. "I am just reporting them" reporting to who?

Whatever you do, never respond to spam, especially to the link that says "remove me from this mail list". This "remove me" option only works for legitimate email, with spam - it's an open invite to send you more spam and add you to verified bulk email lists.

>Spam is the internets way of letting you know your mailservers are working normally.<

 

[KM-Tiger]

>Spam is the internets way of letting you know your mailservers are working normally.<

No, that's silly.

Our mailservers are working just fine, with Spam less than a handful per month.

In fact it's rather interesting when one does get through, to try and work out how they have done it!

 

[Ian J]

I am now being bombarded by spam emails which don't get caught by any filters.

I have been using Mailwasher for years which means that you can examine the emails on the mail server and delete them directly rather than downloading them.

Spam used to be a big problem but Virgin's filters must have improved considerably as I get hardly any now. The problem is that I have to log into my Virgin account online to check the spam to make sure that there is nothing there that isn't actually spam

 

[KM-Tiger]

The problem is that I have to log into my Virgin account online to check the spam to make sure that there is nothing there that isn't actually spam

Catching the false positives is tricky.

We don't try, as running our own mailservers, we send a custom bounce message that includes a phone number. It's rare that anyone phones, but if they do we add them to the whitelist, and there won't ever be a problem in the future.

 

[Ian J]

Catching the false positives is tricky.

Virgin don't seem to like mailshots. Most of the factoring companies send out an email on a monthly basis and many of them are treated as spam by Virgin so I never get to see them

 

[singhabhishek251]

This is a very big problem but we do not receive them in my gmail as I have many gmail ids and google apps as well ass is fine for me. But does anyone knows the exact solution for this?

 

[naxtech]

Actually Gmail is not as good as some people may thing. Hotmail/Office365 is by far, as well as officially, the best in terms of spam filtering.

At the end of the day there are various methods to combat spam and it's all down to preference sometimes.

 

[Nuno]

I have been hammered on gmail before as well as other clients. Change your password. Usually works for me.

Surprised that Outlook.com (Hotmail as is now) is so good. I had a play last year and got a shed load of spam.

 

[andygambles]

Are you forwarding email to gmail from an alternative mail server?

Spam filters at gmail are much better when mail arrives directly at gmail/Google Apps.

Also are you using a catch-all email? This opens you up to massive spam abuse. Instead just configure the email aliases you need.

 

[deniser]

I have managed to block them at server level by blocking certain words which appear in all the spam ones but have new problems today... will make another post.

 

[quikshop]

I've seen a marked increase in spam in the last month or so. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to delete 30 emails before getting to a genuine one :-(

 

[deniser]

Also are you using a catch-all email? This opens you up to massive spam abuse. Instead just configure the email aliases you need.

Yes this was the problem - they were random names @our company caught by the default catcher. But I have to have this in place because so many customers routinely mistype the configured email addresses.

 

[andygambles]

Yes this was the problem - they were random names @our company caught by the default catcher. But I have to have this in place because so many customers routinely mistype the configured email addresses.

If a customer mistypes the email address then that is their fault and they will see that it is wrong when it bounces.

How complicated is the email. We just use help@

 

[alpashm]

If you are using company domain email and forwarding it to Gmail you should really look into getting proper hosted email either google apps or 365. Your current method will makes things messy in the long run.

 

[WebDesigner-uk]

This doesn't directly answer your question but may be useful anyway, as it sounds like it's a business email attached to your website. I would add a spam protected contact form if it was me, and replace the catch-all email with forwarding email addresses of the most common mistypes.

I was getting a lot of spam through a contact form on my own business website. Even though my email address was on every page of the website, I rarely got any spam emails through it, only the contact form. It seems if given the choice, bots will prefer to use the contact form over my email.

Luckily with contact forms, there is a basic type of spam prevention (hidden field technique) which for me at least has eliminated spam.

 

[jasonwebb71]

Like IanJ, I also used to use Mailwasher, though haven't needed to (thankfully) since I moved over to a new ISP and ditched my old address.

Mailwasher is handy as you can check the emails server side, rather than having to wait for them all to download to your computer, which is also handy if some of them have nasty attachments.

The "training" feature always worked quite well for me in being able to sort the spam from the good, and you don't have to automatically delete the spam if you don't want to, so you can still do a manual check when you have time.

Regards

Jason

 

[InternetMarketingPlatinum]

If a customer mistypes the email address then that is their fault and they will see that it is wrong when it bounces.

How complicated is the email. We just use help@

He's saying he has "catchall" setup