Wondering how to opt-out of LinkedIn Sponsored Inmail (which we here refer to as LinkedIn spam)? When you get unwanted LinkedIn InMail email from an individual, you can hit “report as spam” on it. But when you get a sponsored message, you don’t have that option (because, of course, LinkedIn has sold that access to your LinkedIn inbox to whomever sent you that message).

Automated vacation messages are often frowned upon for several reasons, including that they can be a spam vector, that if set improperly (such as being triggered with every single email from every single person) they can actually views as spam, and that they can actually cause legitimate email from you to end up in the spam folder. But as if that’s not enough of a reason to not use an automated vacation message, they can also be used with a bit of social engineering to steal your identity. Here’s how that can happen.

Confused by a confirmation of a new Amazon “Prime Acct Gift” order that landed in your inbox today, when you know that you haven’t placed any such order? You’re not alone. The order with the subject ‘New-order #20953735 – confirmed’ (although the order number on yours may be different) from aaroncasey@realoffersnow.com (although your ‘from’ address may be different) is 100% a scam.

A spam run that appears to be from Kohl’s department store went out this week, advising of a special delivery order from Kohl’s, leading people to believe that an order was placed in their name.

Members of USAA insurance and banking programs have been receiving email that appears to come from USAA (which stands for United Services Automobile Association), but which are actually phishing scams. The scam email comes from the nonexistent domain usaaservice.com (such as from “USAA.ServiceAccount@usaaservice.com”).

As we have noted a couple of times in the past few weeks, spammers and scammers are using the email mailing list confirmation process to send spam. Here’s how that works: someone signs up for a mailing list, and then replies to the confirmation request with their spam. In this case, Amy Happy at amy41211@letmailer.com, seems to be replying to a confirmation message that she, in fact, never received in the first place.

If you receive email from robots@craigslist.org, with information that someone forwarded to you, don’t click on it! This is a new Craigslist scam, where the spammers are using the Craigslist ’email to a friend’ feature to spam you. Here’s how it works.

Did you know that you have a second Facebook Messenger message folder that you may not even be aware of! This other folder is the ‘Filtered’ folder, and it’s where Facebook puts messages that it thinks are spam. The problem is, lots of messages that aren’t spam end up in that spam folder too, and you get no notification of these messages! This is true whether you are using the Facebook Messenger app, or reading Facebook message through the Facebook website – but you can only find the Filtered folder when on the website (not through Messenger). Bonus info: How to delete all Facebook message at once (or at least get rid of them more easily).

Did you get an invoice through Paypal, out of the blue, and from someone you have never heard of, and maybe even for $0 dollars? Odds are that if you did, you were on the receiving end of the newest engine for sending spam: Paypal (and odds are also good that it advertised Jaboo or skrylcomputers.com).

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement between the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, Chile, and Peru. At its heart, the TPP is intended to make trade between these and other Pacific Rim countries who may sign on to the TPP easier. What is interesting, and what many don’t realize, is that the TPP has an anti-spam section that deals with electronic commerce and spam. Sort of.

The Internet Patrol is published by ISIPP Publishing. The CEO of ISIPP, Anne P. Mitchell, was one of the very first anti-spam attorneys in the United States. So it’s a really bad idea to spam her, or to spam us. If you spam us, we will publish out you. If you find yourself on this list, shame on you. To be clear, the definition of “spam” that we are using is that you put us on a mailing list even though you have no connection to us whatsoever, and we have never heard of you. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s legal or illegal – it’s wrong.

If you are getting spam from your friends, or your friends are getting spam from you – or you are getting spam from yourself – or at least it seems that way – you may be wondering how the spam appears to be coming from you or your friends. A likely reason is that someone you know’s address book was compromised. Here’s one way to tell, and how they do it.

“Emergency! Your phone is HACKED!!” says the subject of the email that appears to come from Tech Crunch. But in reality, this email is spam, with a link that almost certainly goes to malware, so don’t open or click on it!

Today, September 3, 2014, a new spoofed GoDaddy phishing spam started showing up in people’s inboxes. “Your account contains too many directories”, it tells you (for example, in our sample the subject is “Status Alert: Your account contains more than 9740 directories”).

Recently some spam posing as an email notice from E-Z Pass has been going around. The EZ Pass spam comes from “E-ZPass Service Center” with an email address of team@miraclemi.org or support@wirenet.org.