Over the past three or four months one of my email addresses (a Onetel one) has been receiving a steadily increasing number of these spam emails claiming to be newsletters to which, they say, I have subscribed (which of course I have not knowingly done). Technically I guess they probably ARE newsletters.
Only about 50% of them are caught by TalkTalk (Cloudmark?) and go to the spam folder. Of those that don't, I am careful only to report them as spam and to block the sender, I do not unsubscribe or click on any other links in the message, however this does not appear to make any difference, they still keep on coming.
When I attempt to report them as spam when logged in via TalkTalk webmail there's a popup saying "Newsletter detected. This is a newsletter. Would you like to unsubscribe or mark it as spam?" with Unsubscribe, Report Spam, and Cancel buttons.
They apparently come from five or six different US financial news organisations based in Delaware and tend to have sensational "clickbait"-style subject lines. I think they are probably all related in some way as the formats and layouts are similar. They nearly all have plausible-looking websites related to them. I can provide you a list of the various sending companies and their stated "trusted partners" if it would help.
I assume I am doing the right thing by not unsubscribing, yet how come Cloudmark detects roughly half of them as spam but still says they are newsletters (it shouldn't ask if you want to unsubscribe in those cases, surely - it doesn't make sense if it has already detected them as spam).
But was else should I and TalkTalk/Cloudmark be doing to reduce the flow? How do I find out if I am "genuinely" subscribed to any of them? Some of the emails say that I am subscribed to a "trusted partner" of the hosting news site but without mentioning who the partner is. Should I try contacting them directly via their websites, or is that asking for more trouble?
Also, it is not clear to me if these are in fact "phishing" emails or not - is there any point in reporting them as such, and if so, to whom? (They are not purporting to have been sent by TalkTalk). Any other ideas?
Thanks and I look forward to hearing.
