Ive just gone to get my emails using Mozilla Thunderbird and its telling me i have 17,000+ emails coming through!!! Some are as big as 16MB each.

WTF just happened?!?!?!?!

 

Does the email account have web access? If so, login to the web interface and see what it's listing. It's possible the mail client is telling porkies. The other thought is that someone has sent a large file to multiple people and all those people have hit "reply all".

Also sounds as though someone possibly has a virus and it's grabbed your address and is pumping lots of emails to you, not sure about the large attachments though, does seem a little excessive.

 

Someone's maybe used your mail address as a return address on spam. Happens to me about once a year.

Have you got a web interface you can access to get rid of them?
Or you could change the setup in your client so it only downloads headers, then get rid of them from there.

I also once got stuck in an autoresponder/undeliverable ping pong, that generated several hundred a minute.

 

They are still downloading into Thunderbird at the minute so i cant actually see who they are from or what they are about. Its on about 7000 now.

The last email i got was from a website i am registered at and it was a password confirmation, although i didnt request it. I think the website may have been compromised and its sending out mail from there. Wont know anymore until they have all come through.

Just hope there isnt more when i next check!

 

Think ive found the problem...

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