Don't know how/why it happened, the last 3 weeks been getting ever increasing daily spam from the leading lefty sites;

Returning from road trip this past week, have about 80 such missives from a bunch of ballot/petition/candidate/political websites supporting the very opposite of my opinion. There is no way I signed up for any of them let alone dozens.

At first I was using the 'unsubscribe' notice at the bottom of their post.

Thought I was falling behind, now I'm sure of it.

Is there something better/easier than just changing my email address?

Somebody's forging your email address into these things.

No, there's not much you can do except either learn hour to use your email app's spam filtering tools or change your email address.

Or do like I do: Run your own mail server so you can black hole poorly-run mailing lists and newsletters, and the service providers that they use, but that's more work than most are willing or able to take on.

Messages - Block Sender.

You piss off someone who knows your email and spreading it around??

In the late 90s I had a senior chief (USN. E-8) who seriously pissed off one of the airman. We suspect the airman signed up the SCPO for every gay porn site that existed at the time, with a request for all available literature. Yes, both email and regular mail.

And at the time, email wasn't private.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
You piss off someone who knows your email and spreading it around??

I suspect this but have no evidence.

I'm reading over various Thunderbird tips.

quote:

Originally posted by signewt:

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
You piss off someone who knows your email and spreading it around??

I suspect this but have no evidence.

I guarantee you that's what's happening.

Are you actually receiving emailed content from these sites, or just sign-up confirmation requests?

If you ignore sign-up confirmation requests that's the last you'll see of each of them. Unless whomever's doing this keeps re-submitting your email address to the same places over-and-over again.

quote:

Or do like I do: Run your own mail server so you can black hole poorly-run mailing lists and newsletters, and the service providers that they use, but that's more work than most are willing or able to take on.

This. It costs very little per month to do this and you will never be dependent on your ISP for your email address.

quote:

Originally posted by mark_a:

quote:

Or do like I do: Run your own mail server so you can black hole poorly-run mailing lists and newsletters, and the service providers that they use, but that's more work than most are willing or able to take on.

This. It costs very little per month to do this and you will never be dependent on your ISP for your email address.

True. Mine costs me a whoppin' $10/month. But it's somewhat technically challenging. It's easy for me because that's what I used to do for a living. Heck, I'm currently maintaining four (4) mail servers in retirement: Two of my own and two for friends But for people not intimately familiar with the tech: Not so easy.

quote:

Originally posted by signewt:
...

At first I was using the 'unsubscribe' notice at the bottom of their post.

Thought I was falling behind, now I'm sure of it.

Is there something better/easier than just changing my email address?

A good rule is to use the "Unsubscribe" link only on known good sites (Amazon, Midway, Best Buy, etc.). On unsolicited email never use that link because it just confirms they've hit a good email address. Also, if you're fighting spam turn off the preview mode in your mail client. In HTML mail if the preview is on it loads images from the sender's server which also confirms they've hit a good email address. Once you've hit a spammer's list it multiplies exponentially from there so while you can employ filters to slow it down changing your email address may be simpler.

Also, it's a good idea to have more than one email address. Use the main one for banking, bills, close friends and known good vendors. Use a different address for forums, magazines, news sites, socials etc. that acts as a throwaway if it gets spammed. I use my ISP's email as my main and a Gmail address for most other stuff. Gmail has good spam filters built in, I rarely see unwanted email.

I've used fastmail.com as my email provider since 2001. It has a facility to define filters that direct emails from specified senders to a "Trash" folder. Items in the Trash folder are automatically deleted after a user-defined interval.

Perhaps your email service has a similar facility. If not, I highly recommend fastmail. I pay $20/year. There are other service levels, including "free".