Spam/Junk E-mail

I got a question today from John in Galway, He asked about spam e-mail in his Eircom Webmail account.

I have been using the same e-mail address for about a year, and never had a problem with spam or junk e-mail, but lately I have been getting swamped with it, I'm using Eircom web-mail as my e-mail service, Why did the spam only start now? And how can I stop it?
John K

Going a year without any spam is an accomplishment, not many people would have the comfort of that! There is a number of reasons why spam could start flooding into your inbox all of a sudden. The usual culprits would be:

• You posted your e-mail on some form of a web message board or forum.

• You joined a newsletter, some newsletter lists are listed to the public on some sites, not a lot but some do.

• You have your e-mail showing to the public on a social networking profile.

• Just unlucky!...Spam bots usually fire out e-mails to a string of addresses, such as a@eircom.net then b@eircom.net and so on, and when they receive a hit back from a certain address they know it's valid and they keep sending to that e-mail

There is certain steps you can take to combat the spam.

Eircom currently offer a paid service, E-mail Protector for €2 / month, and the first two months free. More information is available on the Eircom home page (home.eircom.net)

If you don't want to be paying for this service, which I think you shouldn't considering it's a problem of everyday life, you can switch your e-mail provider to Google's Gmail (gmail.com) or Microsoft's Hotmail (hotmail.com). Both have good free spam/junk blockers built in.