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Mudslide's avatar
Mudslide
New Contributor II
6 years ago

Email Bomb, Spam, THOUSANDS of emails

Starting at around 11 a.m. on Monday, 6/3, I started receiving hundreds of emails to one of my three Cox email accounts. All of them were "thank you for subscribing to our newsletter, etc." All legit email addresses and all from different lists. Nothing in common.

I called tech support around noon and was told that there was nothing Cox could do and that it would hopefully eventually stop.

By this evening, I had THOUSANDS of emails. All were newsletter subscriptions, foreign and domestic. I do not subscribe to newsletters, nor do I open any unknown links or go to weird sites. I wasn't even on the computer when it started and had gone nowhere new nor purchased anything, etc.

After two exasperating phone calls, I decided to set up "rules" for my email flagging anything that mentioned "newsletter, please confirm, thank you for your request, etc." I also flagged anything from foreign countries from Italy to the Netherlands and more.

I can't get this to stop. As of tonight, I have an ADDITIONAL 3,000 emails.

I have no problem with eventually deleting this one email account, but it is going to take me a few days to go through which outside accounts (Paypal, Ebay, etc.) use this particular email address. In the meantime the emails are pouring in.

I'm an individual user, nothing special, no reason why I would be bombed as if i were a large company. The flags are sending all to SPAM but I can't even keep up with the deleting them all. I've deactivated the email account for now.

Any ideas? Since I have been typing this post, an additional 300 emails have come through. 😞 Help.
Annie

  • CarolLM's avatar
    CarolLM
    Former Moderator
    6 years ago
    Hi there, it sounds as if your account may have been spoofed somehow or experiencing malware or spyware. Since you've set up a rule the next suggestion is to change your password then run and run your security software. If that doesn't stop the influx of emails you may have to delete the username and create a new one. I hope that works for you. -Carol
    • Mudslide's avatar
      Mudslide
      New Contributor II
      6 years ago

      Thank you Carol. I run security software regularly and changed my password immediately. Nothing comes up as malware or spyware on my reports. I'm on a Mac.

  • stinkfoot63's avatar
    stinkfoot63
    Contributor II
    6 years ago

    Just to be safe, check through the emails to see if there's any order confirmation from Amazon or some such buried in the mountains of spam.  Check your accounts (bank, credit card, paypal, Amazon, etc.) for unauthorized activity.

    Start changing passwords

    • Mudslide's avatar
      Mudslide
      New Contributor II
      6 years ago

      Thanks. I've been keeping an eye on things.

  • peggy8080's avatar
    peggy8080
    Contributor
    6 years ago

    The exact same thing happened to me last fall. Thousands and thousands came for days on end. It was a nightmare. I had to mark them as spam, and since Cox's spam filter is ***, they continued to come. I had some luck with unsubscribing but that button doesn't work about 50% of the time. I spent literally HOURS on this issue and still today I get them, no matter how many times I mark as spam. I still get about 20 a day. Someone did place a fraudulent order on Wayfair.com and the only way I knew it was there was because I got a text saying "confirm you've turned off text notifications for orders"  The email was buried, and like someone else said the scammer was probably hoping you didn't notice the fraudulent charge. Cox was ZERO help with this, but it's obvious the breakdown was on their end. I feel for you because it was (still is) a nightmare to deal with