Is everybody getting a lot more spam?

[garlicnutty]

My email's overloaded with ridiculous spam. It doesn't really say anything, just contains links which obviously I don't click on.

Haven't seen much about a vast spam mountain on the www lately. A lot of it professes to be 'mail delivery failed' messages, so am a bit worried that my server might have caught a bug and be sending it Though the IP address given in the header isn't mine.

I suppose I just really want to hear it's a spam plague and not my fault!!

What do you mean by your "server"?

IP addresses do change from time to time, are you sure that it's not yours?

In all honesty though what's probably happened is that someone has got your email address from somewhere. In descending order of probability it might be out there on the internet (try googling for it, if it comes up that's one way people find it), you or someone you know might have got involved in a chain email, someone you know might have had their email hacked or you yourself had your email hacked. And there are other ways people can get it, they can just guess for example.

Once someone knows your email address they can make an email look as if it came from you even though it didn't, there's absolutely no security or checking on who an email claims to be from.

Why bother doing that? Well having a "real" email address can help spam emails slip past security systems and your friends are also far more likely to trust it.

So don't panic just yet.

But if you do know how to read an email header (and you're talking about IP addresses so I guess you do) then look up who actually sent the email.

If you're using an online email system (e.g hotmail) change your passwords.

And if you're using Windows then make sure that you've got the trio of Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and Firewall software installed and that they're all up to date.

Thanks, Badger :) I'm a web host - hence the mailserver panic - and have emailed my server admin to double check. I think they are spoofed; they claim to come from my 'home' email, which has been around on t'interweb since 1998. I'm just shocked at the sudden increase!

Thank you for being a much-needed voice of reason.