Taste of Home Email Phishing

springlering62
springlering62 Posts: 8,396 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Got a very legit looking email from Taste of Home, complete with colorful photograph links to low cal recipes, thanking me for my email subscription.

Umm, haven’t subscribed.

Checked the source email address and it is very similar to, but not a legit email.

Probably a coincidence, but my spam filters are excellent and this one got through, plus- how did they know I’m specifically interested in low cal?

I blocked the sender since, presumably, “unsubscribing” would also take me to an infected page.

Y’all mind your Ps and Qs out there.

I’ve had some other odd stuff lately, including mentioning I needed new glasses, as well as asking hubs if he knew where some little podunk town was. I started getting recommendations in my feed for opticians located in that town. And then after saying I was going to make an appointment, I started getting cold calls from opticians in my town. WTH?!

Paranoia setting in….. but seriously creepy when even the spammers know your interests.

Replies

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,235 Member
    Gmail and free outlook can scrape your email for keywords and combine it with browsing data and searches to target ads in an automated fashion.

    Spammers mailing me directly about the same issues would freak me out more!🙀
  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,374 Member
    springlering62 wrote: »
    Got a very legit looking email from Taste of Home, complete with colorful photograph links to low cal recipes, thanking me for my email subscription.

    Umm, haven’t subscribed.

    Checked the source email address and it is very similar to, but not a legit email.

    Probably a coincidence, but my spam filters are excellent and this one got through, plus- how did they know I’m specifically interested in low cal?

    I blocked the sender since, presumably, “unsubscribing” would also take me to an infected page.

    Y’all mind your Ps and Qs out there.

    Probably so... The other issue with going to one of the 'unsubscribe' pages is that the spammers collect the email addresses from those sites - by doing the unsubscribe you are verifying that the email went to a 'good' email address that someone cares about. The emails are collected and sold to both legit and non-legit interests.

    I have tried for years to convince the peeps at Yahoo not to prompt their email customers to unsubscribe from spam emails w/o any luck.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,235 Member
    I have had no problems with and would and do
    unsubscribe from known legitimate companies.

    Increasing their spam score when they are legitimately sending emails because I probably subscribed to one of their offers doesn't really help anything and to date the legit unsubscribes have worked as intended and without problems 🤷‍♂️

    Clicking on fake phishing emails is a different story. 🤬
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,163 Member
    Agree with PAV about unsubscribe.

    Also, unless I know for sure the email is from a well-trusted source, I don't click on links in emails. Instead, I navigate to the relevant web site in my web browser using trusted URLs and tools, and look for the information that way, if I can.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 8,396 Member
    I’m pretty sure this is a phishing email, based on the email address and a quick search of it to verify.

    What’s irritating the snot out of me is now I’m on an email list getting “recipe”suggestions every day. I’ve asked apple to block the sender but they keep letting messages through.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    springlering62 wrote: »
    I’m pretty sure this is a phishing email, based on the email address and a quick search of it to verify.

    What’s irritating the snot out of me is now I’m on an email list getting “recipe”suggestions every day. I’ve asked apple to block the sender but they keep letting messages through.

    If the email address string varies even slightly, blocking one iteration won't work for the next.

    Depending on your email provider, you may be able to create a filter that send messages from "Taste of Home" directly to trash. Or use something that repeats in the subject line to create the filter.

    Good luck!

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