Blocking email account
 

Hi all.
I have an email account which I never use because it is over run by spam. As it is the primary account I believe(please correct me if I am wrong) that it cannot be closed, but would ntl be able put a block on it, so it does not recieve any mail. As all it does at the moment is sit there storing 000's of spam messages.

Thanks

Re: Blocking email account
 

You can't close or block it but you can change the name of it to something obscure like 555556666666 @ntlworld.com. As it's your primary address, you'd need to change your username first - whatever your username is changed to is what the email address will then take on before the @ntlworld.com.

Re: Blocking email account
 

Couldn't they max out the mailbox and let the spamers get undeliverable for a while - I'd heard they don't like that too much.

Re: Blocking email account
 

Couldn't you set up a second mailbox get all the spam emails forwarded to the second address and have the spam emails automatically deleted from the primary account once they've been forwarded?

Without the need for changing your ntl user name.

Re: Blocking email account
 

Sounds a better idea, better still forward them all to someone you dont like...lol

Re: Blocking email account
 

The trouble with this idea, is that then a second email address is full of spam, and as I never use my primary address I dont think it would benefit me.
I thought of auto forwarding it to a non existing address, but they get bounced back or recieved undeliverable messages.

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I think I will go with the account name change. Will my other secondary address stay the same if I change the primary address?

Re: Blocking email account
 

Did I miss the obvious here - if you don't use it - then why do you want, or need, to do anything ?

Re: Blocking email account
 

I just figured that seeing as at any one time there are loads of messages stored, it could in some small way be using ntl's email resouces, that could be better used on other peoples accounts that are used.
I do not know if it would make a difference but if there are a lot of these type of email accounts using resorces on an already not perfect email service, surely closing them will free up the system a bit.

Sorry if that made no sense. I know what I mean, just having trouble putting it in writing today for some reason
:erm:

Re: Blocking email account
 

Nice of you to think of ntl in that way. On the other hand perhaps if ntl offered some sort of spam filtering systme, there servers wouldn't need to be so cluttered.

I would'nt worry about it taking up too much space on the server though, and it would have little effect even if everyone had fulish inboxes. Ntl have their servers set to autodelete old mail that isn't collected (I think after 90 days?) so that will keep the volume down. On the other hand if the mailbox is full of unclaimed stuff, new mails will bounce back as undeliverable so annoying the spammer (unless they are using a spoofed server). Either way, if it's not an email addy you need, you can safely ignore it.

Re: Blocking email account
 

Thanks for your help, I will just ignore it then.

Re: Blocking email account
 

To keep the (NTL) account and prevent it from clogging up by spam, this is what I do to mine...

Set the NTL account to forward and delete all mail, forward all mail to a hotmail account, set the hotmail spam option to maximum, i.e. will trash all mail apart from those email senders who are in your address book only, and set the trash folder to empty immediately.