Linux Mint Forums

I have just changed my mail address. Luckily I have chosen a unique mail for this forum, I get a lot of spam on it daily. I do not hope that I have to change it again soon.

BTW Sorry if this is not the right forum for this topic, I did not know which one to use.

Hi, Miss Bit.

There are many ways in which valid e-mail addresses can get into the hands of spammers. Why do you think this were related to the security of this forum or to the lack thereof?
My e-mail account which is known to this forum does not receive any relevant number of spam e-mails. As a rule the number of spam e-mails will be below 5 per week. And there is no way of telling how the spammers and phishers got hold of this particular e-mail address.

Regards,
Karl

I don't receive any spam whatsoever on the email I use for this site. You're not using a Yahoo email by any chance?

All I know is that the mail address were created for this purpose and I have not used it elsewhere.

In principle an attack is possible, but in this case this problem would exist for many users and the forum would quickly be filled with complaints. So at now there must be another culprit. Even a guessed (by the spammer) mail-address is possible.

Miss Bit wrote:I have just changed my mail address. Luckily I have chosen a unique mail for this forum, I get a lot of spam on it daily.

I think you mean you get a lot of spam on your old email address? As you posted this message on the same day that you changed your email address. Your old email address was stolen early last year when the forum was attacked and user data was stolen. The stolen user data may have found its way into the hands of spammers and that is how they know your email address. We informed you at the time of the stolen user data and impact to you, through email and through messages on our websites and social media. A copy of the email sent to you: viewtopic.php?f=60&t=217506

It may also be because your email provider was attacked and the user data was stolen from them. Or the information could have been stolen from your web browser by some malicious script on a website you visited. It may also be as simple as spammers guessing email addresses and just sending out email to addresses they hope exist.

Spam is just part of being on the internet just as ad popups from your different internet searches.

I have several different email addresses one for important things and one for forums and one for social things.
I receive spam on two of them and none as of present date on the one for important things.

I get three to ten spam hits a week from casinos and dating sites and crap as that but they always go directly into my spam location in my email account where they are removed every thirty days.

My grand children come over and play online games on a desktop with Linux Mint on and the amount of crap downloaded from the sites they go on is amazing.
It gives me something to do since I'm retired.

The Old Timer

The Old Timer wrote:Spam is just part of being on the internet just as ad popups from your different internet searches.

I don't get those. Have you tried pop-up disabling and/or an adblocker?

Moem wrote:

The Old Timer wrote:Spam is just part of being on the internet just as ad popups from your different internet searches.

I don't get those. Have you tried pop-up disabling and/or an adblocker?

Nope.
Where do I go to disable pop-ups.
Mozilla is my browser with duckduckgo as my search engine.
What are some good choices.

uBlock Origin is a very good ad blocker: https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/a ... ck-origin/

The Old Timer wrote: Where do I go to disable pop-ups.
Mozilla is my browser with duckduckgo as my search engine.
What are some good choices.

Firefox, right? Here's their page on the popup blocker.
DuckDuckGo is a fine choice; I'd personally also go find the Addon Manager in your browser settings, and install the add on called Ublock Origin.

Welcome to a less distracting, quieter, faster and safer web experience!

Hey Moem and xenopeek,

Thanks for the info, uBlock Origin is a very good add blocker.
Amazed at the number of hits it shows being blocked on the different sites that I go to.

Thanks.

The Old Timer

Adblocker is the first thing I install when I start a browser for the first time. After this, I install Privacy Badger

I'm not sure Privacy Badger adds anything. At least with uBlock Origin; that enables the easyprivacy blocklist by default IIRC.

Privacy badge still blocks a lot of things on my side, despite having ublock origin, noscript, and Disconnect.
But I have the impression that Disconnect is not working at all.

xenopeek wrote:I'm not sure Privacy Badger adds anything.

I think it does: it also blocks tracking cookies. See the description here. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... -badger17/

killer de bug wrote:Privacy badge still blocks a lot of things on my side, despite having ublock origin, noscript, and Disconnect.
But I have the impression that Disconnect is not working at all.

I think it would be working, if it had the chance... When I didn't have NoScript, it was blocking quite many things, but as you have so many blocking extensions, maybe Disconnect is the 2nd line of defense and thus doesn't get anything to block. By the way thanks for the info, I installed Privacy Badger too.

Lemongrass38 wrote:I think it would be working, if it had the chance... When I didn't have NoScript, it was blocking quite many things, but as you have so many blocking extensions, maybe Disconnect is the 2nd line of defense and thus doesn't get anything to block.

Nope. Ghostery is doing the same thing as Disconnect (but Disconnect is opensource). Ghostery is able to block a lot of trackers, whereas on the same websites Disconnect doesn't move by one inch.

It seems like Disconnect is finally working. Some users have complained about it not showing anything in Firefox 51 and it now displays something on my side. Finally.