Email bombing or email flooding is when a cyber criminal registers your email address to hundreds or thousands of mailing lists, overwhelming your inbox with junk messages. It is often the first domino in a chain of attacks to hack your account or divert attention from legitimate emails about fraudulent activity.
What should I do if I'm getting email bombed?
Please let Technology Services know by submitting the Report a Security Concern form. We recommend that you change your password as a precautionary measure. You may also want to check for fraudulent activity on your Villanova and personal accounts, especially financial accounts.
During an attack
During the attack, you can set up an email filter to move all emails sent from a specific address or domain to a separate folder, such as an 'External Mail' folder. This will help keep your main inbox free until the initial attack subsides.
How to Set Up an Email Filter in Outlook
- Log into the web version of Outlook at https://outlook.villanova.edu using your Villanova username and password
- Click on the gear icon in the top righthand and select View all Outlook settings from the menu
- Click on Mail > Rules > Add rule
- Enter a name for the rule (ex: Move Messages to External Email Folder and set the condition to Apply to all messages
- Set the action to Move to, then select the folder you would like the spam messages to be filtered into
- Add an exception to this rule to permit 'legitimate' emails from being filtered; Technology Services recommends filtering by the sender domain, such as @villanova.edu
- Click Save
After an attack
Once the initial attack begins to subside, you can disable the email filter and use the Block Sender functionality to address any additional messages you may receive. We recommend disabling over deleting the rule, should you need to turn it on for a future email bombing attack.
How to Disable a Filter in Outlook
- Log into the web version of Outlook at https://outlook.villanova.edu using your Villanova username and password
- Click on the gear icon in the top righthand and select View all Outlook settings from the menu
- Click on Mail > Rules
- Toggle off the appropriate rule (it should now appear gray)
Other FAQs
A lot of the emails I am getting have an unsubscribe button. Should I click it?
In general, we don't recommend trying to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Most reputable services that do mailings, won't email more than once unless you have confirmed your subscription. Less reputable services may unsubscribe you, but then sell your address to other services.
Can Technology Services or Microsoft block these emails from being sent to me?
Unfortunately this is difficult because the attacker is not directly emailing you. Instead, the attacker is likely using a bot network of hundreds/thousands of IP addresses that are browsing to legitimate websites, entering your email address, and signing you up to receive a newsletter. Some people want to receive some of these newsletters so we cannot globally block them. We cannot block the emails based on the sender's IP address because they are coming from a legitimate newsletter website. We can block the emails based on keywords in the sender address, subject, or body of the email but we run the risk of blocking legitimate emails if we get the filters wrong.