Imagine walking out to your mailbox at the end of the driveway, opening the door, and having a hundred random catalogs, magazines, and flyers come tumbling out onto your shoes. You never asked for a single one of them—there are gardening newsletters from England, boat repair catalogs from Florida, and cooking club sign-ups in languages you don’t even speak.
What would your first instinct be? For most of us, we’d scoop up the entire pile and toss it straight into the recycling bin without looking twice.
Now, imagine that hidden right in the middle of that giant stack of junk mail was a single, critical letter from your bank asking: “Did you just authorize a $1,500 wire transfer?” Because you threw the whole pile away in frustration, you never saw the warning.
That exact scenario is happening every day inside email inboxes. Security experts call it “email bombing” or “subscription bombing”—and if it happens to you, knowing what to do in the first ten minutes can save you a massive headache and protect your wallet.
How the Scam Works (In Plain English)
When you buy something online, change a password, or transfer money, the company almost always sends you a polite email just to confirm it was really you. If a scammer manages to guess your password for your Amazon, Walmart, PayPal, or bank account, they have a problem: the moment they buy an expensive television or transfer money using your account, you are going to get an email alert about it.
If you see that email, you will immediately call the bank or cancel the order, ruining the thief’s plan.
To stop you from seeing that alert, the scammer uses a computer program that takes your email address and rapidly signs it up for hundreds of legitimate newsletters and websites all over the world at the exact same time.
Within minutes, your email inbox is flooded with 100, 200, or even 500 messages saying “Welcome to our newsletter!” or “Please confirm your subscription!”
The flood of emails is not the attack itself—it is a smokescreen. The thief is hoping you will get overwhelmed, select all the emails, and hit “Delete” so you never spot the one real alert buried in the pile.
What to Do Immediately If Your Inbox Floods
If your phone starts dinging non-stop or you open your computer to find dozens of bizarre “welcome” emails you never signed up for, take a deep breath and follow these four steps:
1. Stop! Do NOT Delete Everything Resist the urge to clear out the mess right away. Right now, that pile of junk mail is a crime scene, and one of those emails is the clue that tells you which of your accounts is in trouble.
2. Go Find the “Needle in the Haystack” Instead of scrolling through hundreds of emails one by one, use the Search bar at the very top of your email screen. Type in these specific words one at a time and press Enter:
- “Order” or “Receipt” (to see if someone bought something on a shopping account)
- “Password” or “Security” (to see if someone changed your login information)
- “Payment” or “Transfer” (to see if money was moved)
- The names of your bank, credit cards, or Amazon
Tip: Don’t forget to check your “Trash” or “Spam/Junk” folders too! Sometimes a clever thief will log into your email and move the real bank warning straight into your Trash folder so you miss it.
3. Check Your Bank and Shopping Accounts Directly Even if you can’t find the hidden email, don’t assume you are in the clear. Pick up your phone and call the number on the back of your credit and debit cards, or open your bank and Amazon accounts the way you normally do (never by clicking a link inside a strange email). Check your “Recent Orders” and “Recent Transactions” to make sure nothing looks out of place.
4. Do NOT Click “Unsubscribe” on the Junk Emails Normally, clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of an unwanted newsletter is fine. During an email bomb, however, clicking links inside hundreds of strange emails is risky—a few of them might be traps designed to trick you into clicking a bad link.
- Instead, once you have found the important security alert and called your bank, you can simply highlight the junk emails and mark them as Spam or Junk, or delete them. The flood usually slows down and stops on its own after a day or two.
Watch Out for the “Helpful Technician” Phone Call
There is a second trick scammers sometimes play right after flooding your inbox: the fake rescue call.
Ten minutes after your inbox fills up with hundreds of emails, your telephone might ring. The caller will sound very professional and say something like: “Hello, this is Microsoft Security (or Geek Squad / Apple / your internet company). We noticed your email is under attack by hackers right now, and we need to connect to your computer to fix it for you.”
Hang up the phone immediately.
Real tech companies do not monitor your personal inbox and will never call you out of the blue to fix spam. That caller is the very same scammer who sent the emails, hoping to scare you into letting them onto your computer.
How to Lock Your Front Door Afterwards
Once you have spoken to your bank or canceled any fake orders, do two quick things to make sure the thief can’t try again:
- Change Your Email Password: If the thief got into your email account, changing your password kicks them out. Make it a strong phrase you don’t use anywhere else (for example, BlueCoffeeMug1955!).
- Change the Password on the Hacked Account: Whether it was your Macy’s account, Walmart, PayPal, or your bank, give that account a brand-new password, too.
Scammers rely on panic and confusion to do their dirty work. The next time you—or a friend—see a sudden mountain of junk mail appear out of nowhere, you’ll know the secret: ignore the noise, look for the one message that matters, and check your accounts right away. If you need help, contact Computer Techs.
Feel free to print this out or forward it to a friend or family member—knowing about a trick ahead of time is the easiest way to beat it!