Spam to a Plusnet-only email address

[#1]

Hi Gandalf, I'd be interested to know why the spam filter seems to be missing these, if it's possible to tell? (I have reported the ones that slipped past undetected.)

[#2]

It would be useful to know when these email addresses were created and where the owners used them.

Has email sent to them only ever been accessed by webmail or have they been received by a PC base client?

There was a massive leak of email addresses from a webmail server many years ago. I have had my PlusNET User Group email address harvested (only ever used in relation to the PUG) abused never used for sending and my only recollection of receiving from it was on account setup. Unfortunately address theft does happen ... but when it comes to asking if data has been hacked ... I do not understand how organisations can assure it has not, all that they can do us report that they can find no evidence of it not having happened which is not the same. If a unique email address given to only one party and only used in a closed environment escapes into the wild ... well there’s only one source for that data to have been hacked.

Unfortunately there are various vectors - client side and server side - through which email addresses can be harvested.

[#3]

In my case, the address I'm refering to was created soon after I joined Plusnet about five thirteen years ago. It is used for communicating with Plusnet, though I suspect I have also used it when mailing other community members. I have used two email clients in this time, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird. This address never received spam until about 3 months ago; it still only gets a few, some of which are marked as such by the Plusnet spam filter and some of which, all the common Polish type, are slipping through unmarked. (I have the least aggressive setting on the spam filter, because I still get false positives.)

[#4]

Hi @ChrisL, I'm sorry that some of the spam is still getting through, it might be worth increasing the aggressiveness (maybe to 2/3 if you often get false positives) just to see if this stops them getting through?

[#5]

Thanks Lauren. I'll try that, but I may find having to rescue good mail from the Junk folder is more of a problem than having to junk spam from my inbox!!  I'll let you know

[#6]

@Routefinder and @caccy1, I've received a response back from our networks guys advising that they're unable to block the domains that are sending you e-mails for fear that we might block legitimate e-mails that other customers may want.

We'd recommend using the spam setting in webmail to mark the junk mail you don't want to see as spam.

[#7]

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@Gandalf wrote:

@Routefinder and @caccy1, I've received a response back from our networks guys that they're unable to block the domains that you are sending you e-mails for fear that we block legitimate e-mails that other customers may want.

We'd recommend using the spam setting in webmail to mark the junk mail you don't want to see as spam.

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Thanks for the prompt update.

For me it has been, though minor, the annoyance factor.

Interestingly, it seems that PN are not able to block based on subject title but I take the point because on the surmise that PN has subscribers whose mother tongue is Polish (or other language where they are likely to legitimately get emails with subject Faktura) it would be wrong to globally block such email.

C'est la vie, I will have to "set a rule" for all such emails with Faktura in the subject because they are coming as spam from varying (apparent) source senders.

Edit ~ I have looked and Faktura is used in Polish, Swedish & Norwegian though also but not it seems with the same (exact?) meaning in Russian.

[#8]

@Routefinder Faktura means "invoice" in several east-european languages. (The Russian for invoice is "schet-faktura".)  My faktura spam is in Polish -- and I haven't ordered anything from Poland!!

[#9]

Yeah sorry that the answer wasn't what you guys were expecting.

I too don't think it'd be right for us to potentially block mail someone else may like.