started getting a lot of phishing messages.

musicegbdf

I the last few days been getting lots of phishing messages pretending to be from google mail with my correct email address... Strange started after using price comparison sites for car insurance.
My eldest has had her hotmail hacked today as well. She can't log in now . Seems there is some cyber stuff going on ..

Grunfeld

musicegbdf said:

...with my correct email address... Strange started after using price comparison sites for car insurance.

For years I've used temporary email addresses for every new site and only use my main address for trusted sites.  I can see the number of spams that get destroyed.

What's interesting is that some sites start spamming immediately; others wait months and months.

My top spammy site has sent me 137,616 spams!  (All destroyed, I've not had to read any of them.)  And I'm looking at another one which has sent 3,567 spams... but it waited at least six months before sending them.

I'm a big fan of temporary email addresses. 

xmrchi

Funny enough I started to get a shed load after using money super market, went from 1 or 2 a day to 30, I'll never use one again, they clearly sell the email addys on

musicegbdf

Yep used that moneysupermarket. I am silly as I do have a seperate email , so shoud start using it.
Last night my daughter had her email account blocked/hacked and can't get back into it (Hotmail) and is trying to get it unblocked.

Made me think again about backing up stuff that is important.

FazTheWookie

I think you can still do this trick with Gmail:-

If your address is myname@gmail.com, you can use the address myname+pricecomparison@gmail.com (the plus sign is the important bit) when you sign up for any sites. The mail will still be delivered to myname@gmail.com, and if it starts getting spammed you can just set up a filter to junk any emails sent to myname+pricecomparison@gmail.com.

frankus

Hello my friend I am a wealthy banker from Kazhakstan and have locked myself out of my car wherein there is an attache case of 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kazhak Tenge worth about £100,000 if you send me £300 I will be able to hire a local sorceror who can put his hand through glass to unlock the car without breaking the glass... and get to the money. I will pay you £500 for your troubles as it will mean I will not be fired for incompetence and the sorceror will allow me to sleep with his assistant who is number 5 prostitute in our district.

ESchap

Ive used Spam phishing for Carp ... works very well indeed