Why am I suddenly getting loads of junk emails?

[Paolosgirl]

They are going straight into my junk file, so Norton must be doing it's stuff - but why am I suddenly getting loads of them?

It can happen for a number of reasons.

Some of the most common are that someone you know has had their email address book hacked, your email address is visible somewhere on the internet or you've opened up a spam email that has images in it (with some email packages you don't even need to explicitly open them as they appear in a preview panel) and that's notified the spammer that your address is genuine and active.

As said there are many many reasons but those last two are something that you can do something about.

Thanks Badgers - will look into it

Or you've given your email address to some company, like for an insurance quote and now they've sold your address on.

DH years ago was getting car insurance quotes and he always ticked the box that says he doesn't want any further info. He made a different email address up for each quote like "halifaxinsurancegoth'[email protected]. It was interesting to see how many companies must have sold his address on as he'd get emails to this address from all sorts of companies.