Sick of spam

[stephen64]

This is getting beyond a joke every day Im getting about 10 emails nearly all spam, is there something I can do about it, my home page has started changing as well. Please help Steve

[Steve]

Well, if your home page keeps changing, chances are you picked up a nasty little program somewhere. You can download and run StartupList and HijackThis (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html) .

Those two programs should be able to find the offending item. If you have problems finding it, you can post the logs here and I'm sure mjc or one of us can help you find it.

As for the spam, there are some good anti-spam apps. out there. Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.net/) seems to be a favorite around here. You can also do things like setting up a second e-mail account that you use whenever you need to give out your e-mail address on the internet. It will become a catch all for spam. Keep your main e-mail account private and you will see much less spam.

[Budfred]

I am a great fan of MailWasher and use it to control my SPAM load, deleting it before it even gets downloaded to my computer.

Also, if you open a second account, I would suggest getting a free web based account that you can simply drop when it gets to infested with SPAM. When that happens, you just open another free account and use that until it gets overwhelmed. Meanwhile, be very careful about where and who you give your primary and private address too.

[stephen64]

Im getting a new computer so before I use it Im going load all that onto it and I will let you know how I get on. Thanks for the help

[LadyGrey]

Wonderful advice already from the guru's but just thought I would put in my two cents and really stress the not giving your primary or even secondary email addresses out to anyone, specially on the web.
My primary email address is reserved for family only!!
My secondary is reserved for state, gov, school, PC Guide,things of that nature, where you know for a fact you will not be spammed.
My yahoo address goes for all others, including online shopping receipts.
When you go to a website that asks you to register your phone number, give a phony one, unless you are shopping, that will cut down on the spam by phone too which is quite as bad if not worse than the other!!
All of the programs mentioned I use myself, having learned it here, and they are a wonder. Don't know how I ever got along without them.
Best of luck with your new computer!! LG;)

[mjc]

This is getting beyond a joke every day Im getting about 10 emails nearly all spam, is there something I can do about it, my home page has started changing as well. Please help Steve

stephen64

Please do not wait, you need to do some sort of anti-adware scan. I would really prefer seeing an HJT scan. Your homepage changing is a sign you are infected with at least one hijacker. You could have much more..including dialers (which are becoming very popular in porn spam) also there is a chance you have been infected with a new class of trojan...spam zombie.

Basically a spam zombie is a trojan that drops an email server on your machine and turns it into a spam sending factory.

[Paul Komski]

that asks you to register your phone number, give a phony one

I give out my pay and go cell phone number. At least it's gonna cost them more to phone me than normal.