Sudden increase in Spam. Severe increase.

[Loose rivets]

. . . not just a slightly annoying burst.

Are the spam readers off for Christmas? Don't they care any more?

Yahoo into my now based W10. Just about everything seems to be tediously changed since ten. Some issues so small you're almost fooled, but somewhere there'll be some damn thing nibbling away.

Any connection, or just my 17 years with this address now hopelessly lost for practical purposes?

[Stanwell]

HEY!
LR, don't you know what time it is?

You worry too much about 'them' out there.
Go pour yourself a wee dram, put your feet up, raise the glass and say "Far-kit!".

Happy New Year, buddy. :ok:

[FlightDetent]

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.

[Tarq57]

If yours was one of the web-based emails that have been hacked, nothing much you can do. (Yahoo had a big mail breach last year.)

If, as I suspect due to the suddenness of the increase, it's some kind of rogue problem, run this. https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/1-adwcleaner/

[barry lloyd]

I found that some of what was clearly spam was appearing in my normal email inbox between Christmas and New Year - maybe BT switch off the spam sorter for the holidays. :D

I have a (completely unsubstantiated) theory for this. Whilst most of Europe are celebrating Christmas, the Russians are not. The BBC website was attacked on Thursday. I had a plethora of spam between Christmas and New Year which, according to my View Full Header originated at Amazon in Germany; unlikely, to say the least.

[Loose rivets]

Mmm . . . the plot thickens. :hmm:

[Ancient Observer]

Mine peaked around the holiday period. Also BT. Gone back to "normal" now.

Why do some legit Companies associate themselves with penis extenders, Asian women, and etc? They should fire whoever runs their Internet presence.

[Loose rivets]

Although I'm hopeful about the decline in spam, so much is going wrong since W10 arrived that I'm considering a total disc format. I'm in the middle of setting up web sites for me book and really, really don't want that hassle right now. Especially as I'll soon only have one eye to work with for a while.

Kaspersky, I'll mumble about on it's own thread.

[FlightDetent]

LR, what's your hard drive type?

[Loose rivets]

'tis SSD, not too big, c 200 divided into two logical drives. E and F are part of an old laptop drive and is were most of the storage is.

C is kept for the OS, but so many companies don't ask and plonk stuff on it. Most tedious. D was supposed to contain just Office and the like. Roughly the layout.

Another USB SSD sitting on top, but I've never got the hang of the Samsung auto backup. Just thought I'd mention that in passing. :8

[FlightDetent]

I was about to propose swapping HDD for an SSD, which would make your re-install trouble massively worthwile. Now as you already have one, that advice is void.

Splitting the partitions on and SSD gives you no benefit, but the downsides of it are miniscule as long as the user is happy with the setup and you keep sufficient free space on the OS part.

Reasonable back-up system, that's where most people tread on thin ice. I did too and the USB drive I bought for it did not help (being stowed in a drawer).