Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
mhicks10
Enthusiast - Level 3

I recently setup my MS Outlook to pull in email from Verizon account which is a practice I used for several years now. I have used other service providers and have NEVER had this issue. I would alos like to add that I had Verizon while living in another state and had the exact same problem. So much for wishful thinking; it would appear as though the Verizon folks want to force your hand on the spam issue. Why do I say this?

Within in minutes, yes, MINUTES, of activating and setting up my Verizon email account I began getting SPAM emails and now get an average of 30 a day.

The fact that it began happening within minutes of setup kind of narrows the responsibility window!

I have tried getting help from Verizon on this but have always ended up getting passed around and ultimately no response as to WHY this is being allowed to happen when it really does appear that Verizon is selling off their email accoutn information.

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Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
topdog
Specialist - Level 2

I have had Verizon since October 2010 and have never had anything in my spam box.  Don't know why?  I have my settings set to delete all spam.

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Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
mhicks10
Enthusiast - Level 3

Since October 2010 huh? Smiley Wink

Gee, the problem "must" be on my end!

So we can all ignore the fact that it happened within minutes of accoutn setup and Verizon thus far has never provided anything, at least to date, outside of attitude and finger pointing.

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Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
spacedebris
Master - Level 2

well many spam email systems use an "auto email address generator" that creates email addresses based on another.

For example. if you have something like  puppydog (at) something (dot) com. then the auto generator will create emails around "puppydog". So pupydog, puppydg, puppydog1, etc will probably be getting spamed already, even if they are not created yet. So if someone has  puppydog as their email and it is on a spam list somewhere and you choose say puppydog2010, it is very possible that you will start getting spam right away.

But really there is nothing anyone can do about it regardless of how it happened. There has been many attempts from ISP's and even legislation geared toward trying to prevent spam, but with most spam comming from off shore acounts, there is not much anyone can do. Other than getting a good spam filter.

Just wait until you get on some other spam lists (if you are on one, its only a matter of time). I have one email address that averages nearly 500 emails a day and 499+ are spam. lol

Edit: That email address I spoke of in that last line. Got 36 spam emails in the time it took me to type that respons.  **sigh

Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
mhicks10
Enthusiast - Level 3

I understand exactly what you are saying and know first hand the measures currently enacted as well as being pushed to make some effort in getting a grip on this issue. It's just that I find it absolutely mind boggling how after mere minutes of setting up and activating my Verizon email account I began getting SPAM. Is Verizon selling off their account names to these **bleep** clowns?

So far, I am finding more reason to learn the ins and outs of the myVerizon page than to call "technical support" since all they can manage thus far is to tell me another number to call.

Once upon a time you got what you paid for, you know, payment for services rendered kind of thing; apparently, that is no longer the case with these guys.

Highly disappointed!

Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
Toobusy
Enthusiast - Level 2

@topdog wrote:

I have had Verizon since October 2010 and have never had anything in my spam box.  Don't know why?  I have my settings set to delete all spam.


The only reason I have not used that setting is because sometimes,  email from my family shows up in the spam folder.  If I set it to delete all spam, then their messages would get deleted too.  

What is odd is that you'll see companys say  that to avoid having wanted email end up in your spam folder, you should make sure their email address is in your address book.  I always laugh because even though I have people in my address book, sometimes their emails go to the spam folder.  Having it there does not stop it from being averted to the spam folder..at least with Verizon.   The biggest offender is when people send me a text from their phone and only reply with OK or K..they ALWAYS end up in the spam folder.  The text has to have more letters in it.   OKAY works great.

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Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
GaryDoug
Specialist - Level 1

Just for funsies, try creating a new sub account and see how much spam you get to that one. Use a real tricky email address with a mixture of random letters and random numbers. Like a24bz12mt6 (at) verizon (dot) net... you know. If you get no spam, that might indicate your main address is a generic target.

Another thing you can do is add a dot within the name field like "john.smith" . I did that for mine and am getting virtually no spam (knock wood).

Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
lasagna
Community Leader
Community Leader

The "spam within minutes" comment has a really easy explanation -- spammers in general have long abandon the "must have an known address" approach (there are still lists of "verified" addresses which are highly valued by that community which spams).   Simply choosing an email address which utilizes common names, combinations of names (initial and name, etc.) may well find you within the spammers sights -- with thousands of bots which can generate mail extremely quickly, spammers routinely true any and all possible combinations of names to find a hit and they target large ISP's like Verizon, Google, MSN, etc. since those services are the ones most likely to have someone with one of those combinations.  Additionally, an infected machine (your own) can result in instant spamming as a bot on your machine may well disclose any and all email addresses it sees to a spamming network in short order.  Not saying that's the case here, but it's amazing how quickly that can happen.

Now .. if the email address were a highly randomized sequence of letters and numbers, I think you might find your results may well have been different (I don't know what address you chose nor am I encouraging you to post it).

Reality is ... and mail address which is out there will eventually become a spammers target.

So, the only real defense is a good anti-spam engine.  I've seen varied success with Verizon's.  I personally like Google's the best.  Verizon doesn't publicize, to my knownledge, what engine they use for anti-spam.  Google's is based on Postini.  My mailbox remains empty (I don't use it as my primary mail address) and I use a pretty common first.lastname address for my email.   I have the "filter" turned on in MyAccount at the Verizon server side and configured to throw away -- not save -- SPAM.

So first order of business:  For each account, make sure you go into the Verizon MyAccount section on the Web and activate the SPAM filter. 

So there are a couple of other things to help understand how and why folks may continue to see SPAM with the filter turned on.  If you use the Webmail interface only, selecting  "Move SPAM to another folder" should help keep your mailbox reasonably clean.   Note however that this doesn't delete the mail from your account, just moves it logically to another folder.

If you are not using the Webmail feature, but instead are using a local mail client on your machine, the "folder" construct is no understood by your client.  Since Verizon doesn't support IMAP for mail, you are retrieving your mail via POP which ignores this structure.  I have to go test, but this may well result in "tagged" spam still being viewable by the client (so, Verizon put it in the webmail spam folder, but since there is no structure for a POP client, it just pulls everything down without regards to this including all the spam).   Solution here really is to change the setting on the MyAccount side to "DELETE" the spam instead of move it.  This is a bit riskier, but potentially necessary.

Lastly, since someone commented about "putting them in your address book", keep in mind that the address book on your local machine is NOT the same address book as the one on the Verizon webmail.    If you are using a local client on your machine, adding the address to your local address book would prevent the local mail client from tagging the messages as spam, but it would NOT let the Verizon tier know to not tag it.  You would need to go to the Webmail interface and add the address there so that Verizon's anti-spam engine would know about it.   Conversely, if you are using the webmail interface, you can't add the email address to a local address book on your PC and have it work either.   Yes, it all sounds confusing, but if you think thru it, it makes sense how it works.

For the OP .. make sure you set the Verizon MyAccount setting for mail to tag AND delete SPAM (not move) and see if that helps.

Re: Email SPAM within minutes of account setup
GaryDoug
Specialist - Level 1

I have never knowingly used a spam filter or service, and probably never will. I have run a small business for the last 12 years that uses email frequently and I can't take a chance of losing anything incoming. Recently I bought a new laptop pc for business trips and it came with Windows Live Mail, which works just fine with me, but I had left on the default spam filter. The second day of the trip I noticed something in the Junk mail folder. It was a quote request from my biggest customer, titled "Want to make some big money this time?". Thanks god it wasn't automatically deleted. Needless to say, I turned off the spam filter immediately.

I probably get about 3 spam messages per week total for all 5 email addresses on 3 providers. If you are getting much more than that, you should examine how and to whom your address was sent, and make corrections, including changing your address. And never, ever allow friends or relatives to openly copy you along with a long list of recepients in their "newsletter" messages. If they won't correct them to hide the other addresses from each recipient, then request they remove you from the list entirely