My very first gmail address has been recently attacked by a tremendous amount of spam mail. I get about 200 spam mails per day, while normally I would just get less than 10.
They are correctly flagged like spam and sent directly to the spam folder, however, it bugs me because they take up connection speed and they catch my attention in the mail software (Mail by Apple), and I am also worried of something else going on.
I have read that it is a technique to bury genuine alerts from websites when accounts are violated.
I have no idea how to stop this spam storm. They are all XXX-rated stuff.
Another very rare stuff has been happening in the last months, always with that email. It seems it is being used by random people to subscribe to legit websites in the US.
At first, I thought it was a genuine mistake.
I received a booking.com confirmation and a flight confirmation under another name and an email address similar to mine (gmail doesn't count the dot in the address, so john.barry@gmail.com is the same as johnbarry@gmail.com). I inputted the confirmation codes directly on booking and on the airline website, plus the last name and they were legit!
After a month, I received another welcome email from another website to somebody else (Michael, I think...). Then this happened again. I think I must have clicked on 'unsubscribe' on one of those email because I was tired to get those email directed to somebody else.
This week I am getting email from petsmart: welcome, your account has been created, you order has been placed, your order is ready for pick up, thank you for shopping with us today etc.
The odd thing is that those 'legit' emails are not labeled as spam and go directly into my inbox.
What should I do?