Spambot letter

[pdp]

I received a Spambot letter today. I have McAfee on my PCs so am fairly confident there is no malware on them. Have been receiving some spam recently advertising personalised T shirts. Seems to come from Vietnam. It could be Spam or it could be phishing but I'm not about to click on any links just in case so I tried to forward it to report@phishing.gov.uk but my email client complains it is spam, keeps it in the outbox where it tries every so often to send it again until I delete it.

Is there away to have Virgin stop me receiving spam in the first place?

Virgins ref VMIS82-SPAMBOT-F009123606

[coenoby]

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@pdp wrote:

I received a Spambot letter today.

Virgins ref VMIS82-SPAMBOT-F009123606

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VM will have sent that letter because one of third party spam detection organisations they use has detected suspicious traffic, consistent with spambot activity coming from your Hub's IP address.

McAfee is probably doing a great job protecting your PCs but the spambot malware could be resident any device on your network, Kodi boxes, Amazon Firesticks and the free version of the Hola VPN have all been identified has being responsible. Unfortunately the detection organisations only know that the traffic is coming from your IP address, they cannot identify the device itself.

The spambot will not be using your VM email account, or any other email account you may have, so you will be unaware of its existence on your network.

The letters from VM usually give you advice on what steps to take and you would do well to follow their advice.

However, one thing to look out for is that if you use a VM email account in conjunction with an email client, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, VM may well block outgoing VM emails from your IP address until the spambot has been removed. That has come up quite frequently on the"Email" section of this forum

In case you have not spotted it,  there is a "sticky thread" towards the top of this forum board which sets out a step by step guide how to track down a spambot ,  Searching for Spambots on your network    Be aware though that is a lengthy job.🤔

By the way, the reason the spam/phishing emails you sent  to  report@phishing.gov.uk were  blocked was because by the time you forwarded them the VM spam filters had already been updated to recognise them as being malicious.

Coenoby

[pdp]

I spoke with a Virgin techie. He was able to confirm the date on which the spam was detected and that co-incided with me trying to forward emails ro report@phishing.gov.uk. So as my McAfee had not detected anything and I have not had problems since, it seems the issue was temporary.