Hello LR, good sir!
The world of IT, I gather, is governed by the same ruthless laws as our daily lives; especially since it had, in various extent, become a factual part of them. Ambitions, taking advantages, wolfs in sheepskins, light side and dark side. You must know them better than I learned until this day. Oh, and the Murphy's ones too.
By the sound of it, you've fallen victim to the unscrupulous. How and why may bring explanations, but no consolation surely. My biggest concern at this point would be to prevent the situation from getting worse, beyond the point of the mailservice being unusable.
Yes,
a) it is possible the spammers had become more effective and vigorous in this time of the year, or
b) your e-mail address got into couple wrong hands yet again.
Have you recently installed any FREE software, prehaps? Especially of the kind that requires e-mail registration and offers promises of smoothly running PC? Now, before the smart reply that W10 fits this description exactly (got me there
), please consider my observation that your dislike of the MS's latest seems out of focus.
Anyways, thanks for being with us here. May 2016 bounce back many joy you spread! FD.