Automatic Spam

[j44ke]

I was deleting emails this morning. Usually I delete things I know to be junk mail without opening them. Just go down the list of headers and swipe delete. But this time I was deleting emails from retailers I shop with (99.99% bike stuff - huh) so was looking at what was on sale in-stock shiny fancy etc. going from email to email. Delete the first one, the second appears, delete that one, then the third one appears, etc. Except that when I got to like the forth or fifth one - an email that said something like "Re: Credit for Amazon Order# 1234567" - suddenly the browser opens and in the next second I've got like 15 windows open in the browser and all sorts of things going on with sound and visuals. Managed to switch into airplane mode, then did a full restart of the phone. Deleted the email on the email service's website using my laptop. Then when the phone restarted, I did an erase>restore from last night's backup. So far seems okay, though not all my apps are restored yet. Taking a while.

I don't think I've ever gotten one of those.

However, I do get weirder spam after periods using cellular-only rather than the WIFI in our house. And yesterday we were doing stuff near Hudson, and there was about an hour when I was reading the news while my wife was getting her hair cut. So that was all on cellular.

Am I nuts/paranoid to think someone has a rogue cell tower out there?

[Tom]

Wifi in your house come through a different source than the cellular feed? In my case I get emails on my phone that are coming through Verizon's system that I do not receive on my tablet that comes through Spectrum email servers. Apparently Spectrum has some filters that Verizon doesn't.

I might be paranoid, but I don't open emails even from entities I do business with unless I am in the middle of business with them like I just did an order. All the sales pushes just get canned.

[j44ke]

Wifi in your house come through a different source than the cellular feed? In my case I get emails on my phone that are coming through Verizon's system that I do not receive on my tablet that comes through Spectrum email servers. Apparently Spectrum has some filters that Verizon doesn't.

I might be paranoid, but I don't open emails even from entities I do business with unless I am in the middle of business with them like I just did an order. All the sales pushes just get canned.

My email comes from providers who are not providing the connection. One of them is very good at filtering spam, the other pretty good, and the last one only OK. But I'm talking more about the connection itself, rather than the email provider.

I'm wondering if the connection is clean. If there might be either someone spoofing a tower or somehow "watching" traffic on a cell tower. I guess for me to receive the email, they'd need my email address. Not sure how easy that is to pick up using a man-in-the-middle arrangement.

I guess spammers could have gotten my address from the hundred or so times that various services we use have been hacked. Or just gotten my name and randomly sent things out to different email addresses with my name inserted. I just get the ones that match what my email address actually is.

Not that this happens too often. And never one of these active emails. Haven't seen that before. But spam does seem to increase when connected to cellular only.

I did discover that I had roaming turned on - or at least it was turned on after I did the restore. So I've turned that off. Supposed to keep the phone glued to AT&T towers and not wandering off with strangers.

Most of these things end up being totally random fishing by spammers though. No actual knowledge, just lucky shot.

[rec head]

You could use a VPN while on cellular. Even just to validate the questionable towers theory.