SPAM - Why Now?

Over the last month I have noticed a significant amount of Junk Mail accumulating in both Gmail and Outlook. I rarely find any Outlook junk that isn’t junk and Outlook in the past has been the account with all the junk compared to Gmail. Recently my Gmail account has been accumulating junk way more than normal. I used to rarely get any junk messages in my Gmail account, but now there are 30 to 40 every day and some are legitimate messages that are not junk. I have not knowingly made any Gmail account changes. What has likely changed?

Well there are presumably two likely possibilities. SPAM is like background radiation… it’s always there and the defenses against it do a reasonable job of deflecting some or most of it. So perhaps the volume is up (with too many miscreants “working from home” like everyone else.) Or alternatively, perhaps the content they’re sending has changed enough that they’re getting better at getting through filters.

The remaining possibility is likely the case if its mostly you noticing an increase. Either you’re deliberately being targeted or your email address(es) have recently been [more] exposed. I have to admit I haven’t really noticed more SPAM than normal of late, but I only use gmail, and I rarely give my email address out any more.

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We’ve had a wave of virus emails the last few days.

Unsolicited emails with attachments are always concerning. Also several just contain phishing links. Both seem to be more prevalent.

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Hacking and phishing attacks are rampant again. For example: Troy Hunt: Inside the Cit0Day Breach Collection These attacks center on websites with lower security or older vulnerabilities to allow them to get the contents of the database and any associated account data.

My new email address was just exposed on a dozen sites but like you I use a Microsoft hosted service that is able to prevent most spam and hacking attempts. None of my personal information has been breached because my email account cannot be penetrated the same way.

As I found out accidentally over the years, even using Google, Apple, or Yahoo! puts you at greater risk if a hacker should find a vulnerability and try a commonly used password or recovery method. This is why some others have not had good luck with these malicious activities, on top of the fact that they have open email systems that they can use against you by creating an alias to send you more spam.

My personal free gmail has been getting a lot of spam recently…This was my primary email for 10 years.
My personal domain account which is on Google Workspace doesn’t have this issue but only been using it for about 5 years.

This cracked me up!!!

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