You’re going about your day. Everything is normal when suddenly you start to get notifications of dozens (even hundreds or thousands) of emails landing in your inbox. Why? Because you’ve just become a victim of mail bombing. That’s why.
At this point you might be thinking, so what? But bare with me here. You see, mail bombing might not seem like a big deal. Apart from the annoyance of having to clean up your inbox. But it’s more than that. Much more.
Scammers use mail bombs as a way to distract you from seeing an email they don’t want you to see. Usually a purchase or a money transfer they have made from one of your accounts. Could be Amazon, Ebay, Paypal or any other site you might use that’s tied to your financial data.
But you get the picture.
Flood the account and it’s easy to miss. But not now you know what to look for.
And there is a snippet of good news in this. Mail bombs are used when a scammer doesn’t have access to your email itself. Because if they did, they more than likely would have set up a filter, meaning the email would have never arrived and the scam would take much longer to uncover.
So what can you do to protect yourself from mail bombing?
- Make sure you use a password manager for your accounts. This ensures you have unique passwords stored away that you don’t have to remember. Most scammers typically gain access to you because of simple, easy to break passwords.
- 2FA – 2 factor authentication ensures that you and only you can access your sites. Enable it on every site you can.
- Have alerts for every payment you make above a certain threshold. This can be in the form of a text message sent to your phone, ensuring you know immediately if something is awry. Take the time to log into your financial accounts and set this up. Five minutes of setting up is much better than the headache you’ll have if you get scammed.
- Regularly check your computer for virus’s and key loggers. Use a program such as Spybot Search and Destroy or Malwarebytes and scan often. No point changing your passwords if you have a key logger or your system!
Apart from that, use common sense online. Make sure sites where you purchase from are secure with https. Don’t buy from dodgy sources. And never ever use the same passwords for all your accounts.