Help filtering spam

Hey everyone, a couple of months ago my computer got a trojan. I could not totally get rid of it even with help from a few online communities. Had to migrate to another HHD. It seems like since then i have been getting alot more spam than i used to. I used to only get about 10 emails a day (that was nice) on average. After this it has bumped up to 30 to 40.

It seems like all the new ones are trying to sell something. They could be the same looking email as another but come from a totally different email address. The hyperlink in the email doesn't look like it has anything to do with the product, so of course i never click on them.

When trying to look up info on the email address it came from it seems like most of the email addresses are reported as just been started or shut down, like they took over someone elses address. I'm sure this is the way most of the spam is sent out, by using a different email address each time to try to get around your spam email settings.

Is this normal procedure with the spam senders or does it have something to do with the trojan i had a couple months back?

Also, what can i do to combat these short of blocking everything except approved emaill address? This seems a little harsh to me, as i may miss something important.



Thanks. Jerry.

You're running your own mail server? What MTA software? I use postfix+clamav+spamassassin but I don't have any useful stats to share (the email addresses are very private).

If I had to guess I'd say about 90% of spam is trying to sell stuff and the other 10% is phishing. Botnets, free emails, and hijacked accounts make up the majority of the sources.

Yes, it's quite possible that the trojan gathered enough information about you to show (a) you have an email address and (b) are a potential attack vector. More spam increases the chance that you'll get infected again.

No not running my own server. Sorry, i may have posted in the wrong forum, or maybe this site or forum is just for programming and mail servers.

Just had this problem with my desktop computer and thought this was a good place to ask.

Flag all the spam you can, and do it on Gmail/Hotmail/whatever - not your local client. Give that some time to kick in.
But if there's not really anything else you can do then you might have to get a new email address.