Thanks Corrine! :)
Yes, I am a big fan of MailWasher Pro, but I have to confess, that is mostly as a mail handler, rather than a spam blocker - though it is excellent at that too.
I would love to blast them somehow, but that would be Spam on Spam
Wise observation and smart decision on your part. The problem is spammers (and malware distributors) don't use their own email addresses in their emails. They "
spoof" another email address in the message (telemarketers and robocallers do the same thing with Caller ID phone numbers). This makes it appear the spam is from a legitimate source, often someone you may know. It is another "
social engineering" trick the bad guys use to get us to click on a malicious link.
There are ways to "bounce" the spam back to the sender to make it appear your email address is invalid. The problem is, because they use a spoofed email address, the bounce does not go back to the spammer. And worse, it often goes back to the legitimate email address holder, resulting in that "spam on spam" situation you noted. Be aware that many ISPs frown on bouncing emails and if done too often, they will close your account or blacklist your email address for sending spam! Not a good thing.
The best course of action we can take is exactly what you did - just delete the email.
For the record, I too have been receiving similar emails. Some "appear" to come from my bank. Others appear to come from banks I don't even have accounts with. See where I made a similar complaint about US Bank spam
here.
Two days ago, I got this little gem:
I have a Wells Fargo account so yes, it got my attention, for about 2 seconds. MailWasher had already tagged it as spam, but the give-away was the poor grammar ("This to notify you..."). The non Wells Fargo email address for the sender and the link were clear give-aways too.
Just yesterday, I got the following, supposedly from Chase bank (I don't have any accounts there either):
As a part of our routine se curity manitoring, we noticed suspicious activities on your account on September-25-2018 from an unrecognized device. For your se curity your account require extra verifi cation process to ensure your identity is save and secured in our database.
Click here to update your account http ://0bc.xyz/91f
Sincerely
Chase Secu rity Support .
© 2018 JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Note that all the spaces were in the email, except the one I put after http.
If you don't have a spam blocker, I recommend checking out MailWasher Pro (MWP) - especially if you routinely receive emails through several emails accounts. For example, I use 6 emails accounts and receive ~50 - 60 emails every day. They are gmail accounts and those provided by my ISP. The vast majority of emails are forum notification emails. MWP, by default, goes to each of my accounts and views the first couple 100 lines. This is normally plenty to look at the entire header and first several lines of the actual email, then analyze that for spam content. It displays all those emails in one inbox. It tags known and suspected spam. It lets me tag (or untag) suspected spam. And it lets me "work" my forum notifications and other emails from there. I can delete, forward or reply to them from the MWP inbox - all without pulling a single email down on to my computer and without even starting my email client (Outlook 2016). Very nice!
So what MWP does is let me process the emails while they are still on the servers. It does not, by default, display any HTML code, nor does it download any attachments that may be attached (it does tell you is there is an attachment, however). This is totally different from most other spam blockers which do download the entire email and any attachments. To me, that is like inviting the potential stranger and bad guy into your home and
then asking what he wants.
So when I am done "working" my emails for the day, I am typically left with just a small handful of "keepers" - emails I actually want to keep. So then I us MWP to start my email client so I can pull down on to my local computer what I already know are safe emails.
MWP also lets you help fight spam by letting you tag new spam and reporting it to
SpamCop and/or other services.
BTW, "Spam" or "SPAM" is a meat product and considered an Hawaiian delicacy. Unwanted emails is "spam" and does not deserve to be capitalized - that is, there is nothing "proper" about it. It is just "spam" with a lower case "s".