Daily Spam re Norton/Mcafee

[andypat]

So much spam getting through at mo , both my wife and I getting same spam, separate email addresses also  my mother is getting the same too.

Been going on a while now - anyone else getting them?

[boothy99]

I thought I'd test the "subject" filter out to confirm it works, even if the filter word is amongst a sentence within the spam heading. It does 👍

I added these to the "Subject multi-filter" rules....

Norton|McAfee|Never miss a parcel

They were sent straight to spam folder, with the yellow flag I'd set. Here's a screenshot -

WORD OF CAUTION !!!!

ANY email with the filter word(s) in, will get sent to spam .... including alerts about this forum message that included the words "Norton/Mcafee"  hahahaha. I've personally deleted those from my filter.

Just had this in my spam folder .....

"Daily Spam re Norton/Mcafee (Virgin Media Community has been updated)"

It's up to you 😉

[boothy99]

....... choosing a (possibly common part) of the heading should be safer than using a single word. 

For example, a spam email saying "Your Norton license has expired today", .... could be filtered with "Norton license has expired", which shouldn't send the legitimate Virgin update emails to spam.

[ALF28]

Interesting comments regarding filtering, I have tended to use single words and that could send genuine emails to spam, so using a phrase may be more accurate.

I use the boothy99 filters and subject filters as well 19 other filters of my own, and get zero spam to my inbox.

So it can be done but takes much effort to set up personal filtering but once set up will work  indefinitely.

It is however beyond the skills of most people, so they should be protected by virgin spam controls which need improving if they continue to provide an email service it should be a good secure service.

alf28

[rogerm]

I'm a victim as well, nearly 50 email messages  this year so far to my VM  blueyonder account asking me to renew my Norton protection which is said to expire this January!
Its driving me crazy! Simple filtering is not possible because the spammers use a wide variety of subject titles and sender email addresses.

Come on VM! give us a solution to these attacks!

Roger Morton

PS I wonder whether there has been a security breach at Mcafee where the dormant accounts have been hacked? Following a clean up of 'bloatware' after I purchased my Hewlett Packard PC in 2016, I had de-installed the Norton software supplied by HP. I note today that my Mcafee account is still there, however,  telling me that my 'Livesafe' software expired 1,473 days ago!  

[Berisford]

"They're beginning to get on my nerves, who are those guys?" 

"I couldn't do that, how can they do that, could you do that?

Who are those guys?"

[boothy99]

Glad you're fairly spam-free, ALF28 👍

I'm not so sure about setting up filters being beyond most folk though. Hopefully the step by step instructions are fairly straight forward if someone takes their time going through them. No IT knowledge needed 😉

[ALF28]

boothy99

I agree, I found difficulty at first understanding the filters myself.

I used your screenshot guides when first trying the rejex filter, you made it very easy to understand thanks

I also use a lot of single filters  or group of them with very specific purposes such as blocking emails with my name in the subject or not address to my name,

In one case blocking a password that was hacked and keeps getting sent to me.

I also for several years I get 3 mails from the same unknown persons usually once a month so have separate filters to weed them out.

One of them spoofs my name in the from field so I also block that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

rogerm

Subject filtering can work if all the keywords used by the spammers are used, I store the spam in a named folder and can then check the subject wording of each spam email and build up my filter to include all the typical words such as virus, infected, expired,remind, renew, subscription, suspended,reactivate,activate,risk., infected, last reminder, norton , mcafee.

I would recommend also putting the same words in the "from" filter as they appear in that condition also, using contains or rejex filtering- this will catch more spam, simply copy and past the "subject" filters to the "from" filter and that will give a bigger coverage of two conditions.

McAfee/Norton/Virus- have they been hacked.

I get these antivirus warnings most days like others do, I have checked and I have no accounts listed with these companies although back in 2007 had Norton on an old xp laptop which came free (not possible to remove it) and may have used the Norton free scanners and safe web and possibly free McAfee products recently,  I have the McAfee app on  my android tablet so it is possible over the years I may have registered my email for some free products and ended up on their distribution lists, but these antivirus email are not from the genuine companies, so not sure who they are or why the antivirus companies have not acted to stop the phishing.

I do use full antivirus products on my laptops but occasionally do a free scan using other companies   scans- Fsecure and Avast, but have also  used Trendmicro , Norton, Eset free online scans.

Looking at the email headers the antivirus spam looks to be generated by spamming software or bots.

One antivirus spam I received 3 days ago  is not even addresses to me but to another ntlworld.com customer name???

The virgin spam filter catch the odd one but are missing most of the antivirus spam and are probably not aware of it????

alf28

[martyns20]

No matter what spam filters I deployed the pesky emails continued...until in desperation I installed Spamdrain.

It's working effectively so far. It is however a commercial offering but I do think it's worth the less than 2euro/month price for one mail account.

So far it's catching 100% of the Norton/McAfee/TotalAV/Bitcoin/Asda/Lenor/Morrisons spam emails.

There is a 14 day trial period before you subscribe

[ALF28]

Just goes to show how poor the virgin spam filters are when spamdrain can stop the antivirus spam.

Perhaps virgin should "review" their own spam filters or change to a better system, they are not doing the job if customers need to buy spam blocking software which does work.

The hundreds of community messages relating to spam have not resulted in virgin improving their spam filtering, with customers resorting to playing with the filtering tools to try and block the spam. Good spam filtering should block all spam.

alf28

[Blueyonderer]

>>PS I wonder whether there has been a security breach at Mcafee where the dormant accounts have been hacked?

I doubt it. I've never had Macafee or Norton accounts but, like many others, I am receiving spam puporting to be from both of these companies daily.

Spam sourced from hacked accounts tends to contain real presonal detail too, to make them appear more legitimate, which these emails lack.

In this case the would-be attackers have probably downloaded a list of verified email accounts from somewhere dodgy and are just trying their luck.