am i getting junk emails?

[kendrz]

have had my hotmail address for about 6 months (my only email) and heard from
other people about spam emails and excess of 50 emails a day, but so far
have had emails only from friends and family.

but tonight i so far have had 3 from funny sounding names, when clicking on
the email notification(msn) it takes long time to load my account and caus i
was already sus i closed the window, when i open my account normally it says
i have 3 new messages but can not see any (even in the junk folder).

so,

1. . . how do they get my address.?
2. . . how can i stop them.?
or 3. . how can i stop live messenger popping up with a notification for
them.?

and yes im fairly new to computing.

thanks heaps.

 

[Andrew]

To answer question 1 and 2... (I don't use messenger so I can't help with 3)

1. Many ways. Some email addresses are sold on from website registrations.
For example sites such as Facebook, Slashdot, MySpace, etc require you to
have a real email account to join and there is very little real protection
to stop that information being sold on. I am not saying these particular
sites do this, they are merely an example.

Another way is that some spammers will randomly generate email addresses for
known domains and send spam out this way. If they don't receive an email
delivery failed response then they assume that the address is live.

And the last obvious way is through PCs that have been compromised by
malware (viruses, worms, spyware, etc) might broadcast email addresses from
contact lists, etc, back to a central location for processing.

Spam is big business. They will get your email address sooner or later.

2. You can't - not forever. Email filters have improved out of sight over
the past 2 years but spammers seem to be making a comeback. The science of
email blocking is complex and wide-ranging, encompassing everything from
artificial intellingence to practical psychology. But the spammers will
always manage to gain small wins by developing new and interesting ways to
bypass the filters.

On a practical front you could try using a spam filter that allows ONLY
content from certain mailboxes but it might only be a matter of time before
even this is overcome.

Spam is big business. They will get through eventually.

Just because they have gotten through doesn't mean that they have got your
credit card details, or have installed anything on your PC. Don't panic,
remember where the delete key is, and remember:

You'll wiin aany laady you waant with Gneerik Viarga!

 

[kendrz]

To answer question 1 and 2... (I don't use messenger so I can't help with 3)

1. Many ways. Some email addresses are sold on from website registrations.
For example sites such as Facebook, Slashdot, MySpace, etc require you to
have a real email account to join and there is very little real protection
to stop that information being sold on. I am not saying these particular
sites do this, they are merely an example.

Another way is that some spammers will randomly generate email addresses for
known domains and send spam out this way. If they don't receive an email
delivery failed response then they assume that the address is live.

And the last obvious way is through PCs that have been compromised by
malware (viruses, worms, spyware, etc) might broadcast email addresses from
contact lists, etc, back to a central location for processing.

Spam is big business. They will get your email address sooner or later.

2. You can't - not forever. Email filters have improved out of sight over
the past 2 years but spammers seem to be making a comeback. The science of
email blocking is complex and wide-ranging, encompassing everything from
artificial intelligence to practical psychology. But the spammers will
always manage to gain small wins by developing new and interesting ways to
bypass the filters.

On a practical front you could try using a spam filter that allows ONLY
content from certain mailboxes but it might only be a matter of time before
even this is overcome.

Spam is big business. They will get through eventually.

Just because they have gotten through doesn't mean that they have got your
credit card details, or have installed anything on your PC. Don't panic,
remember where the delete key is, and remember:

thank you, very informative. cant delete them caus i haven't found them
yet, messenger tells me i received them and "inbox - 3 messages" says thier
there, but in my normal inbox screen (and junk folder) they are not.

guess im in the "spam" system now, might have to disable the notification if
it keeps up.

thanks again

 

[Andrew]

Hmm...

What email application are you using? If it's Outlook you might want to
check what view you are in (recent messages, unread messages, last 7 days,
etc).

 

[kendrz]

Hmm...

What email application are you using? If it's Outlook you might want to
check what view you are in (recent messages, unread messages, last 7 days,
etc).

windows live hotmail, has all the folders - inbox - drafts - junk - deleted
and sent.

inbox is where i usually get them from , both read and unread.