[gifthorse]

I seem to be getting a lot of spam lately. This isn't the "buy this product type stuff". It's notifications that "Your image won first place!" in contests that I didn't enter and "Your photo has been damaged". One was from 'Astrophysical something or other' and other was from 'Automation PhotoCloud'. Never heard of any of these outfits and I ain't clicking on links in emails from someone I've never heard of. (I don't even click links from someone I DO know.)

[Adam]

I seem to be getting a lot of spam lately. This isn't the "buy this product type stuff". It's notifications that "Your image won first place!" in contests that I didn't enter and "Your photo has been damaged". One was from 'Astrophysical something or other' and other was from 'Automation PhotoCloud'. Never heard of any of these outfits and I ain't clicking on links in emails from someone I've never heard of. (I don't even click links from someone I DO know.)

The best you can do is invest in a good spam filter. There are underground marketplaces that will sell mailing lists containing your e-mail (and 100k's of others), and no degree of unsubscribing will ever stop the spam once your e-mail address is well enough known. I have SpamAssassin running on my e-mail server and it works quite well. You can program it to immediately delete spam for peace of mind. Gmail also does a good job, though I'm inherently opposed to hosting my e-mail on a server which I do not control, as your private data will be shared with others (google indexes links in your e-mails and scans the content for ad keywords, yahoo got fully hacked, etc.).

Ultimately what these people want to do is make money. Some will send you malware (i.e. installing a botnet or ransomware on your PC), others will send you to click on ads or free "offers", others will try to trick you to sign up for recurring (scam) products, still others will attempt phishing to get more of your personal or financial information. One thing you can do to stay safe is always block external images, never download attachments to your PC (i.e. use a remote e-mail client rather than a local one), and if you do click on a link, never submit any private info, and open it in a sandboxed environment if possible.

An alternative would be to change your primary e-mail entirely, and disclose it only to necessary entities.

Thread moved to general talk.

[gifthorse]

I wasn't sure where to put this post. I know spam happens and I just wanted to let people on the PF know that some seems to be targeted at photographers.