Woke up this morning to hundreds of spam emails in my inbox and it’s not stopping. Someone (or something) is using my email to sign up for all sorts of crap and I’m being inundated with “thanks for subscribing / registering” emails, each addressed to a different gibberish name (just a string of characters). Is there any way to stop this? I can spend hours unsubscribing to them all, but for each one I deal with, 2 more take its place. Any help? Cheers
Potentially, but my email is used all over the internet too. @btinternet (so use Yahoo). Not even remotely similar - completely random and half of it is foreign stuff. Started at about midnight. No new software / updates recently. Last was about a week or so ago and that was a Windows anniversary update.
Okay, not trying to be awkward, but won’t be able to try until I get home tonight. That said. I’m still getting hundreds of emails, despite my PC being off (which it also was when the emails started). If some malware has acquired my email address, then getting rid of that malware surely won’t stop the emails? For example, if I knew your email address, I could sign you up for a bunch of crap and nothing you do on your PC can stop me? It seems like I’ve just been unluckily targeted by a spam bot that has stumbled across my email address on the web.
I'd say it's more likely to be this than some kind of malware. With the number of companies that have had user data released over the last couple of years, your email's probably just turned up on a spam list somewhere. Just to make doubly sure, though, I'd run a scan from an antivirus rescue disk rather than from within Windows - just to make sure nothing's hiding from your AV.