Spam question

Hi stinkfoot63, mark the messages as spam by clicking on the blue spam button between delete and new filter. You may also help stop spammers by sending the full headers of these messages to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov

Here is a link to our site for more information on reporting spam:  http://bit.ly/1pnmsTE

First, thank you for your reply.

I'm aware of the spam button and my loose understanding of that is that it serves to configure aggressive filters that reject emails from hitting my account without vetting the source- which would be a possible step toward halting a problem that could result in my address being blacklisted on email servers and rejected out of hand if my address is abused enough

My experience with government resources, (Consumer Protection, Do Not Call, etc.) suggests that they are little more than placebo buttons intended to create the illusion that something is being done.  if my only option to ensure my ability to email is to change my address then so be it.  Unfortunately the inconvenience is huge as much of my personal business uses that address.  Ideally I'd like a specific individual either in Cox or elsewhere to forward these to and have some sort of access to the steps being taken to root out the cause.  Probably not feasible.

Unfortunately this is probably a genie I won't be able to put back in the bottle... changing my primary address will be the best solution.. and setting up ongoing temporary addresses for transactions on places like ebay would be a good change in my own behaviors to forestall my confronting this again.

Again, thanks for replying.

MichaelJ said:
Hi stinkfoot63, mark the messages as spam by clicking on the blue spam button between delete and new filter. You may also help stop spammers by sending the full headers of these messages to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov

Here is a link to our site for more information on reporting spam:  http://bit.ly/1pnmsTE

Hi, don't forget to send an example to spam@uce.gov along with a description of the issue. -Mike 

This has been happening to users of other email providers for years.  Cox has either been lucky or good about foiling spammers.  Recently i got a bunch of returned (bounced) spam that had been sent with my reply address.  The Cox tech checked to see if they were in my SENT file. They weren't.  So i figured that they were just "pasting" my address in their spam.  The spam emails were the bogus "We are closing your bank account unless you click on the link in this email".  The Cox tech said to change my password but i didn't since it didn't seem that they were inside my account.  That Cox tech called the IP where the spam was originating and warned them about the spammer.  That was wonderful.  The spam ended.

One month later i got more bounced spam.  The 2nd Cox tech had me go into Classic Webmail (not Enhanced) and click on Settings.  By clicking on the Blocked Addresses link, he saw that someone had put more than 20 domains in my blocked box.  I had not done that.  I emptied that box and changed my password.  But none of the spams were in my SENT file.

Last week i got another bounced spam (with me as the return address). The 3rd Cox tech said that they were not sending this spam from my account.  They were "spoofing" my return address.  She said that the only thing i needed to do was to hit "This is spam" above the email.  I said that wouldn't do much because someone reading it would think that i had received a phishing attempt.  She said no; the person in the Spam Department would instantly see that my account was being spoofed.  I hope she is right.  She also reminded me to look into the Forwarding link on my Settings page because spammers like to get into it and forward our emails ..... and we don't realize until our Inbox is empty for days. 

I am hoping that Cox takes this seriously.  In the past, the spammers relied on the free email providers to send their junk mail.  Spam filters around the world expect the spam to come from those 3 or 4 big providers.  But the spam filters don't expect it to come from Cox..... so the spammers are much more successful.  If this continues, Cox will see more spammers using Cox' good reputation against Cox users.