Spam emails. How do I stop getting them?

Open an Outlook webmail account and make use of the 10 free alias addresses. These addresses are as permanent or as temporary as you want them to be. Any repeated unwanted mail that arrives in an alias address is sitting on "death row" waiting for you to pull the switch by deleting the address.

Microsoft hosts this webmail and they make it easy to import mails from your old, "busted" account. You can then cancel the old account and the "woodpecker" type spam that plagues it.

Use scrambled usernames for non-social contacts. Names like regina2016 or regina007 are already busted before they get out of the gate. Spammers keep those types of names in their password-cracking software data bases and they "shotgun" all the best known webmails with those easy-to-guess usernames.

Instead, use something like t9W4xyTsH7@outlook.com for non-social contacts. Very hard to crack, just like a good password.

You'll probably need a password manager for use in automated logging in so you don't have to type the scrambled username. Try LastPass.

For social contacts, use something like reginamarkt9Fc5Hk@outlook.com.

Note the 2nd word after your name. That 2nd word is important. Not only can it be the name of a friend using this address to contact you, but should the address somehow become compromised with unwanted mail from someone else, you can establish a new alias address for you and "Mark" to use by changing that 2nd word and the random string of characters that follow.

Example? reginamarcus7jRc4Bxkau@outlook.com . Note that "mark" is changed to "marcus" and the random string is also changed. You could also have changed the 1st word "regina" to "reggy" or "regeena" and left "mark" as is.
The fewer people you have using your alias address, the fewer you'll have to notify should you ever have to change an alias address to another one.

If 10 alias addresses are not enough, you can add 20 more free aliases by opening webmail accounts with gmx.com and mail.com. Both offer 10 free aliases each. 30 addresses should hold the fort for a while.

This approach gives you absolute "veto power" over the "woodpecker spammers", the ones who keep changing their own addresses each day so you can't block them with filters or blockers. You can stop their visits with these aliases.

When you're done setting up Outlook, you might get further inspiration from AOL's Exclusive Blocker which can block any incoming email address that is not listed in your AOL email Contacts.

Good luck!

 
I have been getting a lot of spam emails in the past couple of days. How do I stop them or block them?

I forgot to explain the importance of that 2nd word in a social alias address.

Your hypothetical friend Mark is not going to want to scrutinize the random strings of the old and new replacement addresses to figure out which one to take out of Contacts and which one to put in to Contacts.

He won't have to. The 2nd word tells him that "marcus" is the new and "mark" the old. He saves the "marcus" address to Contacts and removes the "mark" address.

Nor will he ever have to type your address, once it's copied and pasted into Contacts. He just selects it in the dropdown menu when composing an email message to you.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Hi Joseph,

Where you're using scrambled email addresses please note there are also services such as SCRYPTmail that offer disposable addresses.

The disposable addresses are a nice way to give a temporary email address to an untrusted site or contact, for example if you need a temporary email address for site registration.
 
Top