Can we speak frankly about porn spam?

[phylny]

For the past few weeks, I've been gathering between 15 and 25 emails in my spam folder. Everything from MILFs wanting to get it on with me (I'm a MILF, I mean, woman, too!) to Viagra/Cialis to sex buddies to video affairs to even more affairs to you name it, it's in the spam folder. The good news is that it's in the spam folder. The bad news is that there's more and more of it.

Has this happened to anyone else here recently? I'm wondering if it was related to the hack on election day, which I believe gathered our email addresses.

I'm going to need to work on my filters some more.

[shenmue]

1. I've had these before

[phylny]

2. I've always had spam - just not this amount :)

[sagetea]

3. 50 Shades of Grey

probably...I'm getting them too.

sage

[NCTraveler]

4. Hasn't happened to me.

And not sure why a hacker would go the porn route.

[unblock]

5. mixed blessing. keep in mind that porn built what we now call the internet.

technically, the internet has been around for quite some time, but it didn't really take off commercially until three things happened:

the first thing was the creation of the hyperlink/world wide web.

the second thing was al gore's initiative to get all federal government agencies to pour massive amounts of information on the web. this made the web a tremendously valuable resource, so people wanted access to it, and to search and explore.

but despite much hype and anticipation, people were very wary of putting their credit card information "on the ether".

which brings us to the third thing -- it took the porn industry to pry open people's wallets and get people comfortable with paying for things online.

once they showed they could earn not just a profit, but tons and tons of money, everyone rushed in.



so i take today's spam with a grain of salt. sure it's annoying, but it's a reminder that it served a purpose once upon a time.

[bhikkhu]

6. Google mail filters work for me

I don't remember how I set them, but I don't get any spam in my inbox. If I look in my spam folder its full of that stuff, but it gets deleted automatically after a few days so I don't have to do anything.

[MiniMe]

7. I've gotten a lot of them the last few weeks

[Thor_MN]

8. Be happy that it is not Spam Porn...

[phylny]

10. Okay, now that's not fair! First of all, I didn't know what to call it.

Secondly, you made me bust a gut laughing!

[CrispyQ]

13. I can't stop laughing.

[dewsgirl]

15. Hilarious!

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. All it takes is for your email address to show up on a list somewhere

It could be that someone who has you in their address book got hacked, or they guessed your address. If you've ever opened an email from an unknown sender (especially if you let it display any images), they may have got confirmation your address is real. After that, they can sell lists of addresses to each other.

If there's more spam recently, that may just mean you got added to a new list somewhere. I haven't had any more spam on the email listed for DU, so I don't think there's any reason to think it's come from the DU hack.

[Submariner]

11. Within a day or two of the rubes electing Trump

I've started getting email porn from Russia advertising Russian girls. With that kind of coincidence, I've been wondering if the GOP/Trump machine got DNC email lists of contributors to Democrats, and they are fucking with us still, because they can.

Unfortunately, murdering republicans is still against the law, otherwise I would like to catch the MF'ers that start this bullshit.

[brush]

12. Scroll down way to the bottom of the emails. There should be a small link to click to opt out...

of receiving them. It might take you to another page to verify that you want to opt out.

Been there, done that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Do you really think the people who send porn spam follow good email netiquette?

Come on, if they did have a link like that, they just use it to confirm someone looks at their emails, so clicking on it encourages them. The only orgs who will actually take you off a list are genuine companies that you can complain about in public if they don't, and who have a reputation they need to defend.

[brush]

19. Come on. I just related my experience. I did the opt out link and it worked. Scoff all you want.

[Denzil_DC]

20. I would strongly advise anybody AGAINST doing what you suggested!

Think about why somebody might - out of the goodness of their heart? - send you porn in your mailbox. Ever been fishing?

These sorts of spam email can come from the accounts of innocent folks who've been in email contact with you in the past. They may have picked up malware that rifles through their contact lists and sends out whatever sort of spam the perps want to propagate. The folks you've been in touch with may be innocent, but the spammers aren't (Mrs. Denzil's Hotmail account was plagued with offers to enlarge her penis a while back).

Or there are botnets that just send out vast amounts of spam and phishing emails to random strings of letters and numbers. It's no sweat to them if most don't relate to real email addresses because they send out so many that they get a useful number that respond in some way and end up ensnared or infected, and so the cycle goes on.

If the email comes from one of these botnets, clicking on anything in the email sends them a signal that they've got a live 'un, which is basically like you sending them a message saying, "Hey, spam me again!" It also lays you open to ending up on a site which will try its damnedest to infect you with malware.

There are more sophisticated methods they can use, like including a one-pixel - hence invisible - image hotlinked within the email, which registers on their server when somebody views it, again telling them they've got a live 'un.

The best thing to do is not even open these messages (difficult if they come from an email address you may recognize), set up whatever filters your email provider offers you to block them (which probably won't be effective but is better than doing nothing), and/or report them to your ISP and/or email provider so they can maybe block them system-wide.

Clicking on any link in them is just about the worst thing to do, short of sending them your bank account details.

[brush]

21. There are were no attachments. I've successfully gotten rid of the problem as I described.

It's a pretty standard way to opt out, but thanks for the info.

[Denzil_DC]

22. You were lucky, then. Others may not be.

None of what I've described relies on email attachments, so I don't know why you mentioned them.

As Muriel pointed out above, "unsubscribe" is a valid option if dealing with legitimate companies (and even then I'd exercise extreme caution).

It's stepping into a trap with the likes of the spammers referred to in the OP.

[bathroommonkey76]

14. Do you have a Yahoo account?

My Gmail account also has been getting a lot of different types of spam-- I'm thinking it could be an ex gf who is using subject headings with personal information to get back at me. My advice is don't click on them. The spammers know if you open an email and if they see you have opened one they'll keep sending the nonsense to your account(s).



Here's the email from Yahoo that I received:

Dear D,

We are writing to inform you about a data security issue that involves your Yahoo account. We have taken steps to secure your account and are working closely with law enforcement.

Our outside forensic experts have been investigating the creation of forged cookies that could allow an intruder to access users’ accounts without a password. Based on the ongoing investigation, we believe a forged cookie may have been used in 2015 or 2016 to access your account. We have connected some of the cookie forging activity to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the data theft we disclosed on September 22, 2016. Those users targeted by the state-sponsored actor were sent an additional notification like the one found here: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN26995.html.

We invalidated the forged cookies and hardened our systems to secure them against similar attacks. We continuously enhance our safeguards and systems that detect and prevent unauthorized access to user accounts.

We encourage you to follow these security recommendations:
Review all of your accounts for suspicious activity.
Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.
Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails.
Additionally, please consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password on Yahoo altogether.

For More Information

For more information about this issue and our security resources, please visit the Yahoo Account Security Issue FAQs page available at https://yahoo.com/security-update.

Protecting your information is important to us and we work continuously to strengthen our defenses.

Sincerely,

Bob Lord
Chief Information Security Officer
Yahoo

[Stinky The Clown]

17. Be very wary of links posted by low count posters

Basically, don't click on ANYTHING you are not certain is safe.

[Croney]

18. Yes! I've suspected it had something to do with the hack.

My spam file has been much fuller since the hack. Or it's just a coincidence. Either way, it doesn't really bother me. I wish bad karma on those assholes.