Inbox Flooded with Sign-up Messages? Email Bombing Explained
Inbox Flooded with Sign-up Messages? Email Bombing Explained 🚀
In September, reports emerged that a Virginia woman had been submerged by a flood of emails. The real reason behind the inbox blitz was to bury a legitimate email from the victim’s bank warning her about a fraudulent laptop purchase. This is email bombing. If it’s happened to you, it could be a warning sign that your identity or online accounts have been hijacked by fraudsters.
Sometimes called “form bombing,” “list bombing,” or “subscription bombing,” email bombing attacks usually follow the same pattern. An attacker gets hold of your email address, potentially from historic data breaches, marketing databases, online leaks, or a prior phishing attack. They’ll use automated, bot-powered tools to sign up for hundreds or thousands of legitimate online services. These will each generate a welcome email or similar. Because they are usually legitimate services, they’re often not blocked by spam filters. The result is an inbox overflowing with messages.
Why Do Scammers Use Email Bombing? 🤔
Two reasons are behind most email bombing attempts: The scammer is trying to distract the victim so that they don’t see a genuine email among all of the artificially generated ones. They may have hijacked one of your accounts and reset the password, triggering a notification to your inbox. The main point is to create a smokescreen which prevents you from tackling the more serious fraud. The hacker may subsequently contact you pretending to be a tech support engineer, requesting a fee or tricking you into installing remote access software. In a corporate scenario, the bomber is most likely trying to distract the cybersecurity team from a more serious attack, such as a data breach or a business email compromise attempt.
What to Do If You’re Affected? 🔍
If you’ve logged on to find your inbox overwhelmed, don’t panic. Rather than try to unsubscribe, focus on finding the threat your attacker wanted to hide. Search for security alerts, new device sign-ins, password changes/resets, or purchases. Look through your spam folder as well as your inbox. If you notice something unusual, lock the hacker out by changing the password to a unique, strong credential, and enable two-factor authentication (2FA). Put the phone down immediately if anyone calls you claiming to be a tech expert who can sort out your email problem.
Prevention Tips 🛡️
To prevent email bombing, you can limit the damage by ensuring that your email address is not exposed on public-facing web pages like social media profiles. Follow security best practices to stay safe from phishing attacks. Keep your most sensitive accounts as secure as possible, including your primary email address. Use a password manager to ensure strong, unique credentials. And 2FA for an extra layer of security. It may also be worth using a secondary email address for less important correspondence.
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