Bombarded with e-mail
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Silverage

Original Poster:

2,430 posts

160 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
One of my personal e-mail accounts has just been absolutely bombarded with over 300 sign-up confirmation e-mails from websites all over the world. Most of them are the type that require you to click a link to confirm the registration, so they should go away but some just seem to confirming that I'm in. No doubt lots of e-mails to follow from them.

Worryingly, I was also notified of a new addition to my Spotify family plan. This account runs under the same e-mail address as above. I've weeded out the new arrival and changed the password for the Spotify account.

Has this happened to anyone else recently?

HantsRat

2,409 posts

138 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
Change the password to your email address too.

Silverage

Original Poster:

2,430 posts

160 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
I may do that, but there's no sign that the e-mail account itself has been tampered with.

It's all stopped now just as suddenly as it began. There were a few stragglers from websites in Australia and Singapore. Most of these are not commercial websites in that they aren't selling anything. Many of them are just discussion groups and forums. Apart from the nuisance value of dumping loads of email on me, I can't see what's been gained here. It all happened within a space of 15 minutes so it must have been an automated system doing it, rather than an individual who has the hump with me for some reason.

xeny

5,517 posts

108 months

Friday 6th November 2020
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Silverage said:
It all happened within a space of 15 minutes so it must have been an automated system doing it, rather than an individual who has the hump with me for some reason.
you don't think there are automated systems that can be used by someone who has the hump with you?

The spotify account aspect is the larger concern to me - was it a reasonably robust password?

Silverage

Original Poster:

2,430 posts

160 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
Just been doing a bit of reading online and it looks like the Spotify account may have been the target here. All the other sign-ups are just to generate a blizzard of e-mails that the perp hopes will serve to mask the Spotify notification.

Jazoli

9,681 posts

280 months

Friday 6th November 2020
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Someone has put your email address into mailbait.info by the sounds of it. have you pissed anyone off recently hehe

Silverage

Original Poster:

2,430 posts

160 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
xeny said:
you don't think there are automated systems that can be used by someone who has the hump with you?

The spotify account aspect is the larger concern to me - was it a reasonably robust password?
I like to think I wouldn't upset anyone to the extent they would arrange something like this for no benefit other that the nuisance factor.

The Spotify account goes back years and the password was rubbish, frankly. I think it started off as a free account (the one where they play ads all the time) so I didn't put a great deal of effort into it as it was effectively worthless.

It's probably done well to last as long as it did. I've changed it to something much stronger now. The e-mail blizzard has finished it seems.

limpsfield

6,677 posts

283 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
Silverage said:
Just been doing a bit of reading online and it looks like the Spotify account may have been the target here. All the other sign-ups are just to generate a blizzard of e-mails that the perp hopes will serve to mask the Spotify notification.
I had exactly this 6 months ago. My quidco account had been hacked and a request to withdraw money to a new account - but as you say lost in the deluge of emails. Managed to pick it up and stop it before it cleared.

Silverage

Original Poster:

2,430 posts

160 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
Jazoli said:
Someone has put your email address into mailbait.info by the sounds of it. have you pissed anyone off recently hehe
Mailbait - who knew? "Do you want more email?" they ask.

Zetec-S

6,929 posts

123 months

Friday 6th November 2020
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Silverage said:
I like to think I wouldn't upset anyone to the extent they would arrange something like this for no benefit other that the nuisance factor.

The Spotify account goes back years and the password was rubbish, frankly. I think it started off as a free account (the one where they play ads all the time) so I didn't put a great deal of effort into it as it was effectively worthless.

It's probably done well to last as long as it did. I've changed it to something much stronger now. The e-mail blizzard has finished it seems.
yes I believe a load of logins were compromised a few years ago.

I only realised mine had been when I was getting loads of really crap song suggestions (ie. the sort of stty artists who don't use vowels in their name or replace every other letter with "x" or "z").


Magnum 475

4,185 posts

162 months

Friday 6th November 2020
quotequote all
Silverage said:
Jazoli said:
Someone has put your email address into mailbait.info by the sounds of it. have you pissed anyone off recently hehe
Mailbait - who knew? "Do you want more email?" they ask.
That site has so much potential!