topic Spammer using my email address (post Greenby) in Email

Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

ColdharbourDave — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 10:17:25 GMT

I had a lot of problems with a spammer using my email address to send out malicious spam to users of the United States Social Security department.

If you hover over "official website of the U.S. Government " in the original email - it is my PlusNet email address.

This went ton for a couple of weeks. I reported it to Greenby support and it seemed to stop - so I closed the ticket.

This morning I had 220 ermails in my inbox which had bounced back from email gateway (in USA presumably)

eg: This is the mail system at host gateway1.enmail.co.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

Moderator's note:
Image rejected as it contains third party’s personal information and live links.

I think 220 of these multiple rebounds in my inbox is excessive - added to which there were a further 9 in the my Greenby SPAM bin (along with a lot of non-spam)

So - is it reasonable to expect Geenby to filter these out?

Who is responsible for getting the spam to stop?

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

Baldrick1 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:31:16 GMT

@ColdharbourDave

I have absolutely no idea of the source of this latest batch of spam but as an aside I have checked the email address that you post on this public forum against the https://haveibeenpwned.com/ database. This advises that your email address appears in no fewer than 15 data breaches, with the harvesting by the bad guys of both this address and a password. Consequently, you are very likely to suffer from spam issues.

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

Champnet — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:43:51 GMT

@ColdharbourDave wrote:
Who is responsible for getting the spam to stop?

Ultimate responsibilty is yours.................

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

ColdharbourDave — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:02:03 GMT

Yes well very useful @Baldrick1

I have three alternate email addresses on webmail and two are clean, one compromised - though less compromised than my Plusnet main email address

I'm thinking the main culprit might be LinkedIn.

I had a phase where I put up all sorts of data on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I came a cropper via Facebook about 8 years ago - someone opened a BT mobile and landline account at an address in Camberwell using my personal details- including date of birth - it cost me most of my credit rating and lots of negotiation with BT fraud department in Belfast.

Now this.

My current PlusNet (COPPER) phone/broadband contract expires on 11th May - so it seems I have the choice of trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted - or turning over a completely new leaf.

Thank you for the haveibeen link - I never knew!

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

ColdharbourDave — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:07:24 GMT

Just to add to moderators note - my image did NOT contain live links.

It was a photo obtained from Alt-Print Screen then changed from .png to .jpg

Nothing live there.

If you can't illustrate a problem, how can you illustrate a problem?

As Bertrand Russell said to Wittgenstein

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

Baldrick1 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:50:17 GMT

@ColdharbourDave

Adding, be they screenshots, of spam emails to a post very rarely adds any information of use to community members. If Plusnet staff want any such information they will contact you via a private message.

If I were you I would stop using compromised addresses, be it a major pain to advise legitimate users.

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

pvmb — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:11:20 GMT

@Baldrick1 wrote:

@ColdharbourDave

I have absolutely no idea of the source of this latest batch of spam but as an aside I have checked the email address that you post on this public forum against the https://haveibeenpwned.com/ database. This advises that your email address appears in no fewer than 15 data breaches, with the harvesting by the bad guys of both this address and a password. Consequently, you are very likely to suffer from spam issues.

Seems to neatly sum up the real problems here.

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

Champnet — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:44:12 GMT

@ColdharbourDave Are the emails undeliverable notifications. If so there's not a lot you can do about them.

Eventually they will stop, in the meantime just create a rule in your client software to move them to the junk folder.

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

ColdharbourDave — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:31:06 GMT

@Champnet These 200+ overnight were undeliverable notices.

A week or soo ago I was getting sporadic messages resulting from ones that got through saying such things as "Reported to the FBI - you're going to jail"

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

Champnet — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:21:49 GMT

@ColdharbourDave Unfortunately some people will take offence and reply accordingly.

The problem is they are replying to the person named in the 'reply to' who may net be the person who sent it...

Re: Spammer using my email address (post Greenby)

ColdharbourDave — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:52:13 GMT

After another round of email password changes Greenby have shut off my email and removed my ability to access their site - and therefore raise a ticket.

I guess I have no rights in this - as I am (for now) a PlusNet customer and have never paid Greenby.