Accidentally caught up in a scam?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Jul 2013 Posts: 3

I think I have a problem I don't know how to solve. For the last several days, I've been receiving emails from numerous (hundreds) of men on Craigslist, trying to hook up. I'm in Australia, and we really don't use Craigslist here. At first I thought someone was being incredibly spiteful and putting my name up on a hookup section, but I looked at some of the emails and a) they're not for my email address (my email address is my name. This email address is my name with a number on the end), and b) the particular Craigslists involved are all over the US. That, and the sheer volume of messages (about 120 messages yesterday alone) makes me think that I'm receiving emails from potential marks (who don't have much in the way of attention to detail).

I've been filtering these messages into the bin (the closest I can find on Gmail to blocking), but they just keep coming. Is there anything that anyone here can suggest to make it stop (even though I'm potentially very glad to shield people from scams, if that's what it is, I don't want to see this rubbish every time I open my inbox)? (Alternately, would you like the email address to play with? I've admired this site for years, I never thought I'd come here asking for help)

*** BANNED *** Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 1123

My guess is someone set up an email address and then used it to play dirty on craigslist. They then set that email address to forward all replies automatically to your email account.

Sounds more malicious than scam to me or someone pulling a prank perhaps? Easiest thing to do may be to contact the email provider that keeps forwarding you the naughty invitations and complaining to them about what is going on. That may stop it.

Also for curiousity's sake it is just one email address forwarding these email to you right and what is the address?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Jul 2013 Posts: 3

Thanks for your reply.

It's not coming from one email address, as such. What's happening is that I'm getting emails as if I had put up a personals ad. So [email protected] will email and say "hey baby I'm at this hotel tonight send a pic", [email protected] will email similarly- except it's hundreds of them, all different (as you would expect if I had put u a dating ad or had been responding to them). Most of them don't have Craigslist footers and have been sent directly, but some of them have footers. The ones that have footers all say "hey, u really interested? contact me at my personal mail (my email address plus some numbers) ^^gмαiℓ.¢oм^^", but they're from various different Craigslists. If someone were forwarding me these I'd just block that address and be done with it (unless there's a way of them forwarding it without me being able to see the forward?), but I can't predict where it's going to come from, if that makes sense. (I've also set up a filter to automatically trash the email address in the way it's been written in the original Craigslist message, and divert any message that contains the word Craigslist to another folder)

It's the persistence of this that makes me think I'm receiving emails from potential marks.

I'd rather not give out the email address publicly as it's my name, but I'd be happy to message it to you or someone if it might help.

*** BANNED *** Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 1123

Ah ok, and no please do not post your personal email address here and I do not require it at all even by PM.

This still sounds like a prank to me. Someone setting you up on ad sites like this. I just do not see the scam angle here. It sounds like someone pranking or maybe you really pissed someone off badly?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Jul 2013 Posts: 3

Thank you. I did think prank at first (I don't think anyone has any reason to dislike me that much, but who knows), but if that were the case, why would they use an email address similar to but not identical to mine? (I also don't know why so many men can't tell the difference between janedoe at example dot com and janedoe 1234 at example dot com, but that appears to be the case here)

I thought it might have been an attempt to get someone hooked into an online relationship of some sort and then extract money from them, or blackmail them if they decide to send inappropriate pictures (which plenty of them have done), although it doesn't seem to be the most effective method if that's what they were trying to do. I don't know. Something's just seriously off about all of this.

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 7:17 am

Try "Googling" your email address, if it's posted in CL adverts, it will show in the results.

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 6:04 pm

Are these potential bounce-backs messages? Sometimes these guys will put someone else's address in the "from" section of a spam and that innocent victim gets all the undeliverables in massive heaps.

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:21 pm

1 Change of email address should get the inbox clear and only forward those messages that you care for to the new one.
2 Google spam should be able to filter them all out, after some training, click an unwanted message and then click in the top bar, "mark as spam", never anything from that address again.
3 put a message as automatic answer (holiday message) to all incoming email that explains/provokes/^$^# or what ever rocks your boat and maybe one or two will see that they might have the wrong address to email to.
Good luck

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 9:02 pm

Could you post the headers so that we can see what's going on? Post at least three which appear to be sent to three different addresses, but redact the addresses so that we can see only the differences between the addresses, not the same part (e.g. change all occurrences of your name in addresses to фывапролджэ, but leave the numbers).

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