Phising emails increase

[#1]

After I registered a complaint with Plusnet a few days ago, I received a phone call from a member of staff. She checked my account & said my email security settings were on the lowest setting (I had never changed this setting, I didnt know about this) & she updated it saying I should see a reduction in phishing emails. Ha ha no I havent. I told her that if my security setting was always the lowest, why hadnt I been getting hundreds of phishing emails each month! I also said that I had come onto this forum for advice & saw that many other users are having the same problems & she said she wasnt aware of anybody else reporting this issue!!!

i also told her that I wasnt happy that Plusnet were getting rid of us to Greenby & how these problems only seemed to begin very recently. 

Last night I googled ‘why are Plusnet users getting so much phishing emails’ & the immediate AI generated reply was already aware that this was happening. So why arent Plusnet, or do they just not care?

[#2]

Hi Townman,

Thanks for your response.  I have been marking the phishing emails as spam from Thunderbird email client, to no obvious benefit.  As these all seem to be from  different spoofed addresses I imagine the filter cannot identify any consistent feature with which to create a rule?

[#3]

This is my opinion.

Operators of legitimate mailing lists should periodically poll all addresses on their mailing lists to ascertain whether subscribers wish to remain on the mailing list. Any address not replying should be removed from the mailing list.

I remember taking out 'ownership' of a domain. I received 'spam' to an alias on that domain for something *I* didn't subscribe to. This was before and after chancing an an UNSUBSCRIBE.

But that's the murky world of spam, innit?

[#4]

I also have received several phishing emails / general spam to my default plusnet email and now to my other current plusnet email address. I can't remember the last time I received any spam or phishing emails before then - months, if not years, ago as far as I can recall.

They began on the 11 November. I had a flurry of 5 from 'ali express'  on the 12th and a few others since.

I am supposedly being transferred to Greenby on 23 November.

Just before the spam started appearing I noticed my email client (Thunderbird) apparently downloading thousands of old emails (that were already in my inboxes) from the plusnet servers.

It seems likely that these things are related but I am no expert. 😕

[#5]

It’s now the start of April, Ive been transferred to Greenby & now for the last 3/4 days I have been unable to send emails. Also the scam/spam emails are still coming in with great regularity - I must have received around 1,000 since this problem began in October 2025. So I’m clearly not seeing any improvement with Greenby’s takeover of our email accounts 🤬

I am seriously thinking of leaving Plusnet after having been a loyal customer for around 14 years.

[#6]

Since I've been with Greenby I've received more scam emails in one month than 20 years with Plusnet.  Only today I have received 20 identical scam emails, all disgusting content.  What possessed Plusnet to dump 1.5m email accounts onto this absolutely useless company.

[#7]

@dealey1963 we see floods of the same sender forged 'sex extortion' emails

If you have an email client that can process the email header data the Greenby spam filter fingerprints for this scam are :

spf=softfail

LEAKED_PASSWORD_SCAM(7.00)

VIOLATED_DIRECT_SPF(3.50)

HFILTER_HELO_BAREIP(3.00)

HFILTER_HOSTNAME_UNKNOWN(2.50)

RDNS_NONE(2.00)

[#8]

Me too. I reported it to Plusnet last October when the spam first started to arrive - & before I was forced onto Greenby. Their response was my spam setting was too low, so the call handler upped it to the maximum. It made no damn difference. Since this started I have received getting on for 2,000 spam/phishing emails. I did start forwarding them to National Cyber Security Centre, but there are so many that I now block the address & delete.

My opinion of Greenby - they are not fit for purpose & shame on Plusnet for treating their loyal customers like that.

[#9]

Hi  Thank you for your reply.  I'm afraid I'm a bit rubbish at all of this and am not sure what the fingerprint reference means in your message.   Two things I can tell you is that the offending emails are coming from my own email address.  Also, I used to be able to get my plusnet emails through Outlook (not web based).  This now shows an error which I don't understand.  Maybe you will recognise it.  0x800CCC0E.

Regards

[#10]

@dealey1963 

Error : 0x800CCC0E.

Suggests a problem with the email credentials.

For Greenby the Outlook POP3 or IMAP and SMTP Username is the email address of the mail box,
the old <account>+<name> style is not recommended, and I would avoid using an Alias as a Username too.

If you were a Plusnet email only customer it is important to pay the Greenby £15 fees in the first 30 days.

[#11]

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@NotAGeek wrote:

Me too. I reported it to Plusnet last October when the spam first started to arrive - & before I was forced onto Greenby.

My opinion of Greenby - they are not fit for purpose & shame on Plusnet for treating their loyal customers like that.

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The link with Greenby, once again, eludes me.
 

[#12]

Greenby.com the management portal : https://greenby.com/

Greenby.com the Web mail : https://webmail.greenby.com/