Spam from the uk.

[umpireman]

I am getting 15 to 25 spam postings daily to my email address from the uk. I suspect this is a result of my membership in the HealthUnlocked forum. Is there any way to lock out these transmissions? Umpireman

[Ironj]

I get a lot more then that and it’s got nothing to do with a particular membership. There no different then telemarketing scams.

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

Have you ever disclosed your email address in an unlocked post on HealthUnlocked that hasn't been spotted and removed by the admins and volunteers? (We assiduously check for this and advise members to use the secure Private Message/Chat feature.) Perhaps you've done this on another UK site? With all my posts and replies, I don't get much spam at all - it's mostly email notifications of newsletters I do want to read that ends up in my junk folder. I also have enabled the "Email me announcements and occasional news, tips and insights from HealthUnlocked" and "Contact me for research purposes..." notification options enabled in my settings healthunlocked.com/settings

Read this post for more tips on maintaining your security and privacy: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Neil

[Marie-54]

i have been a member of Health Unlocked for a while now and have seen absolutely no increase in SPAM. I doubt if Health Unlocked is the cause.

[umpireman]

I don't where they are coming from. My only contact with the uk is with HealthUnlocked. Examples of the spam I am receiving from the uk, Garden Herbs that stop memory loss, Personal loan up to $15,000, Asian Beauties, ED cures, $50 reward from Costco, Get a free flashlight, My recent credit scores are available, Get a reward by completing Amazon survey, Apply for cheap home insurance, Find treatments for spinal stenosis, etc. Needless to say, I do not open any of them. Umpireman.

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to umpireman]

There are what are termed 'bots', programs that automatically search out email addresses disclosed online and sold onto spammers/scammers. The latter get a financial return from the businesses they are touting when someone clicks on a spam add, etc. The internet knows no country boundaries and spam doesn't necessarily come from where you think it does, or offer services/products from the claimed country of origin.

I don't know why you are seeing spam with a UK flavour. It could be that your email address was incorrectly categorized as belonging to someone from the UK when it was harvested.

I don't recall any other mention of other HU members seeing increased spam after joining HU from what other community admins share. If you want to follow this up further, you can email HU Support at [e-mail] .

You may be interested to know that most email is spam. The situation has improved considerably since 2008 when over 90% of emails were spam. It's now down to just over 50%:

statista.com/statistics/420...

The spam problem comes from the error of not charging even a small fee for emails when email standards were established, making it profitable for spammers to get financial returns from just a few percent of people responding to spam emails. We never see most spam sent to us, because email providers detect nearly all of it and delete it without our knowledge. We can help with improving the detection and deletion of spam that does get through by reporting it as such if your email provider has that facility.

Neil

[umpireman in reply to AussieNeil]

Thanks for your reply. Good info. The reason I think these spam messages are originating in the uk is that their email address ends in .uk. John

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to umpireman]

Email addresses can be spoofed, disguising their real origin: searchsecurity.techtarget.c...

[otonal]

Hi, seems unlikely they are UK spam as we don’t use $

[lexie]

I do not get the spam emails from UK either. Been on this site a couple of years.