Excessive Spam, Junk Mail from "geeksquad" email address?

[Zeromus]

Experiencing some frustration with the following, and thought to see if anyone else is having this issue and/or have found a solution.

I've been getting an excessive amount of spam/junk for the last two months, and the majority of it is arriving directly in my inbox.  While some of the messages do not have email addresses that I can see (and thus, I frustratingly can't add them/their domain to my spam/block list), the largest number is coming from the email address geeksquad@emailinfo.geeksquad.com

This is obviously a "known" and "safe" email address for BestBuy's Geeksquad.  I was reluctant to add it to my "Blocked Senders and Domains" list because I wouldn't want any legitimate BestBuy purchase/reminder/receipt emails being permanently blocked. 

Sadly, the number of emails haven't gotten so bad, I unfortunately ended up doing just that.  What's more, I also removed the same email address from my "Safe Senders and Domains" list.

Despite this, I'm still getting tons of spam from the above email address, and most is still arriving directly to my inbox.  I'd be happy to just have these email redirected to my junk/spam folder at this point, but it's all becoming quit maddening and annoying. 

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon and/or was able to "fix" this from happening? 

Thank you, and appreciate your collective insight. 

[#2]

I have been having this issue for weeks. Tried blocking and removed from safe list while set to exclusive. Getting 30 to 50 a day in my inbox all looking like coming from other people. I use outlook to use safe list/contacts only emails. Driving me crazy.

[#3]

@Zeromus   Same problem.  Now I am receiving hundreds of emails every day and, no matter what I try, Hotmail (or Outlook) is not blocking them.  I cannot send emails from the account; the system is giving me an error message:  "There was an error sending your message".  The account is totally useless! 

[#4]

@Thor9876 me too

Does anyone know why Microsoft cant block this??

[#5]

@Terry Matthews 

I just started getting 40-50 @emailinfo.geeksquad.com spam emails a day starting yesterday.  I've had my hotmail account for over 17 years and this is the first time I have been hit so hard by spam and I cannot stop it.  I've tried EVERYTHING mentioned on this board including creating rules, set up spam blocks, set rules on both the web side and the Outlook client side, etc., etc., etc. and nothing works to stop the spam.  I was an email administrator for two large corporations, and more recently a large hospital chain, so I'm familiar with email, smtp, spam appliances, firewall rules, etc. Obviously Microsoft is the problem, they are allowing the spam to come through, and their spam rules are not working - something is really wrong with this, it's almost like someone on the Microsoft messaging team was paid to "remove" the spam filter for this address periodically.

[#6]

Amen! @Shadowtrax 

I am still dealing with this, hour after hour day after day, months later.  You are much more knowledgeable than I am.  I started to migrate my email to a GMAIL account, but, after all these years this is not simple.  I just wish there was some type of official response Microsoft would give instead of workarounds.  Um, how about you just take care of it.  And if you can't, say so.

[#7]

@HazelMoates 

I am so sad and disturbed to hear this, so sorry...

As mentioned, I have years of email system experience, I set up a system for a major university, I've helped design and run very large (hundreds of thousands of users) email systems for two large multinational corporations (one was the largest maker of cpu/chips - big blue). I've worked with Novel email, Pegasus email, Lotus Notes email, cc:Mail, Unix/Pine email, VAX email, and more recently all the versions of Microsoft corporate Exchange/365 email, taught Outlook/email classes at a corporate level, on and on.  Given the shear number of employees, we get massive spam, and spam dumps all the time.  To stop this particular issue (and I've already added it to the spam appliance at work), all I need to do is add a hard set rule to block emailinfo.geeksquad.com on the spam appliance in the DMZ (and make sure there aren't any other rules that have something in them that would allow it through) - there's a few more IP and message related blocks I do that I won't get in to, but it stops the spam to the masses.  This same thing would be done on the Microsoft spam appliances they use, but somehow it appears Microsoft does not want to deal with this specific address/issue for some unknown reason.  They can filter on more than just standard name/address (which is spoofed), so there's no reason why they can't deal with this unless it's money/politics....  

I guess I'll need to move my address to another seeing that Microsoft won't resolve this specific spam address issue and it's been going on for several years, but as you are painfully aware, it is very time consuming and painful.  Curious to know if the emailinfo.geeksquad spams are 'getting through' on Gmail or other email services??

[#8]

Sender "From" field is geeksquad at emailinfo.geeksquad.com with domain GEEKSQUAD.COM extracted from return path.
This domain HAS an MX server, meaning it can receive email.
This domain DOES appear in the .com zone file, so it is a real domain.
We have received 702 ✓ complaints about this domain.
Domain IS NOT on the Spam.org Block List (SOBL).
Whois info for geeksquad.com
Registrar for this domain is MARKMONITOR with 10775 ✓ complaints and IANA ID 292.
Domain was registered on 1995-08-19 and expires on 2022-08-18.
Registrant is DOMAIN ADMINISTRATOR with organization BBY SOLUTIONS, INC. and email is email address removed for privacy reasons.
Abuse complaints for domains at this registrar can be sent to email address removed for privacy reasons.
View live and historical ownership information on 3rd party site domainIQ.
Registry info for geeksquad.com
Registry controlling the .com extension is VERISIGN, INC. with 74833 ✓ complaints.
We have received 182460 ✓ complaints for the .com extension.
Zone / DNS info for geeksquad.com
We found this domain in the latest .com zone file, so it is a real domain.
This domain is using AKAM.NET 2664 ✓ as its DNS server.
There are 62,792 domain names using the same DNS server.
The .com extension has 156,718,031 domain names.
Web crawl info for geeksquad.com
We did discover content when crawling this domain.
The web site is hosted on 104.101.181.159 which is associated with AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES INC..
MX / Mail Server info for geeksquad.com
Found 2 mail servers authorized to receive email for this domain.
Mail server mxa-002a6b01.gslb.pphosted.com with IP 67.231.153.219
Mail server mxb-002a6b01.gslb.pphosted.com with IP 67.231.144.196
SPF info for geeksquad.com
Found 18 mail server IPs (or subnets) authorized to send email for this domain.
Email sent from 1 which IS NOT authorized to send emails on behalf of @geeksquad.com

[#9]

The spam I am routinely receiving goes well beyond the geeksquad spam. Lots of emails that used to be just routinely blocked. Here is an example that made it into my inbox today (deleted a portion of the email address): Electric Bill Savings Confirmation Receipt <...+email address removed for privacy reasons>

[#10]

TLDR: I set up a rule based on message headers and it seems to work.

I started getting flooded with these emails 2 days ago and quickly ended up here when I looked into it. Odd that the same thing happened to others almost exactly a year ago... Anyway, like many of you, I had already tried creating various rules, even blocking the entire geeksquad.com domain. As we've seen, the messages keep coming, right to the inbox; neither junk nor block rules seem to work like they should here so it's clearly something Microsoft needs to address. Maybe they inadvertently removed a filter they already had in place from last year?

Anyway, since I didn't see a solution anywhere--here or elsewhere--I looked at the message headers and noticed that the ones I hadn't deleted yet all had the following line in common:

Return-Path: email address removed for privacy reasons

A quick search showed that this is a known malicious domain, so it seemed a good choice for a block rule. I don't get actual Best Buy emails, but for those that do it might be better this way than filtering on geeksquad.com. I set up the following rule to test:

If the header of the message contains the words 'ivoryges.com', move the message to folder 'Junk Email' and stop processing more rules on this message.

And it works! As soon as I ran it, all the relevant messages in my inbox (the handful I hadn't already deleted) moved over to my Junk Email folder, so I'm posting it here in case it helps anyone else out. I got one more while I was typing this and it was automatically filtered as well, so I'm cautiously optimistic so far. If this works for a few days, I'll change the action to "permanently delete it". I set it up in the web version, live.com, but it synced to the Outlook client on my desktop and is editable there so you should be able to set it up either way.

Now, I don't know if that same domain is present in anyone else's email headers, or whether they change it periodically to get around this sort of filtering, so this may or may not help anyone else. I figured I'd put it out there just in case it's useful and because I hadn't seen an actual solution anywhere yet. If the above domain doesn't work for you to filter on--or if it stops working in the future--you may want to look and see if there's a different one being used in your headers. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-internet-message-headers-in-outlook-cd039382-dc6e-42... for info on how to view message headers in Outlook (client or web).

Good luck, and hopefully this will help some people until Microsoft enables/reenables what they need to on their side.

[#11]

@rsc123az 

Best Buy sucks and you shouldn’t shop there. This post starts out personal but gets to the interesting part very quickly, so please read on.

Today is my wife’s birthday. Being a good husband I decided to come up with a nice surprise. She was probably expecting something along the lines of a case/skin for her iPod Nano. In reality, I wanted to surprise her with a nice laptop. As you may remember from my previous posts, I bought a MacBook Pro for myself just a few weeks ago, so I wasn’t going to go crazy in terms of my budget. But I thought that an affordable laptop for browsing and writing would be an unexpected and very welcomed gift. What I didn’t know was that Best Buy was going to hijack my plans.

[#12]

@rsc123az 

This is a great alternative solution. Thanks.

These marketers get smarter every day.  They will change up their tactics.  I still recommend that you Report Junk emails to Microsoft with the hope that their security & spam team address this annoying issue. 

And, users should flood BestBuy & GeekSquad sites with dissatisfaction of spam emails.
Website: https://bestbuy.com/support  
Scroll to the bottom of screen, select Feedback. 

/Teresa

[#13]

@Teresa_Cyrus 

I keep getting breakthrough junk/phishing emails just like this. They change the company, etc. 

[#14]

@HazelMoates 

Yea. And marketers know it is not best to block a primary domain name, like gmail.com, outlook.com, & yahoo.com. So, you are unable to stop them.

Annoying. Right.

In this case, still, report it to Microsoft. 

Aghhhhh!

[#15]

@rsc123az this worked like a charm. Thank you. I encourage others to set up this rule.

Because I get so much spam, I have my Outlook.com mailbox set up so that only people on my allowed senders list can get through. Everything else goes to junk.  It took me a looong time to set it up but once I did, it worked like a charm -- for awhile anyway -- until these "geeksquad" emails started getting through. (And as others have said, regardless of the sender address, the actual email content has nothing to do with Best Buy. The content is seemingly random and all over the place, from coupons and ads to malicious phishing attempts)

To try and combat this I added this geeksquad address to my blocked senders list, and also added a rule that moved anything from that address to junk.  It didn't work.  It's like when confronted with these emails, Microsoft's mail processing logic totally breaks.  Microsoft, please fix this.

[#16]

You will find when you block/flag that email address it is your own email address that appears in the junk dialog box.
Select "junk email options and add that email address manually. At the same time remove your email address from the junk mail list.

Dennis 88

[#17]

@Zeromus 

Its almost surreal that MSOFT has not addressed this - its happening to me and its seems like countless others for years now??? I read through all the threads and no official MS Response. At lot of good hacks though - thanks to those who contibuted.

[#18]

@Teresa_Cyrus : thank you for your insightful advice. There is most likely similar reply as this one, somewhere, regarding unsubscribe to spam/junk emails - many of these spammers are linking google search page to the unsubscribe at the bottom of their marketing emails,  making it an additional futility to attempt to unsubscribe to something that you personally did not subscribe to in the first place. 

Additionally, these geek-squad spams that have nothing to do with making a purchase at Best Buy need be brought to the attention of Best Buy.

[#19]

@Daniel_BD 

Check my response about how I personally feel about junk email.  I think you will get a kick out of it. 

Re: Tons of spam being delivered! - Microsoft Community Hub

By the way, I agree with your response.

/Teresa

[#20]

I think it has to do with the GMAIL app on the phone. I switch to Outlook app which I do not prefer but it seems to have eliminated the spam email. I will report back tomorrow.@Zeromus 

[#21]

@rsc123az 

Probably the best advice on here! Use a header rule. I viewed properties of the header, copied everything to Notepad so I can see it. At first I was doing the whole "Return-Path:" line that included the e-mail. Then I just started by picking up other items. Like reoccuring subject words "CBD" "Tommy Chong" or "USAWildSeafood." I have it set to delete them and it works. 

While that solution works, this would be a never ending task to stop these e-mails. I have also downloaded a freeware app called "MailWasherFree." Once you have it set up and running, it allows you to flag what's spam and what isn't. You can enable FirstAlert which compares e-mails against an online database. It has a learning engine which assigns an evaluation score to e-mails. You can set it up to hide them. It does domain blacklisting and it works. I haven't gotten any "geeksquad" e-mails. I have tried a few others and this one seems to work the best. This app really fills in shortcomings in Outlook. 

Spammers are aggressive. You have to be as aggressive in return to combat them.