Suddenly getting thousands of spam

Question

I installed firefox thuderbird, i never used it. I did today and now in apple mail i have started to get thousands of spam. It's always delivering 207 emails at a time. What has happened. Also the spam emails are dated sent on 20th september.......help

Answer 1

I'm very sorry.
Yours sounds like an attack. Being one of the first to hear, by phone, of voting irregularities in Miami, during the Bush election, I wrote the Secretary of State of Florida and asked it be investigated. I immediately received about 500 e-mails a day from Hong Kong, advertising child p.o.r.n.o.g.r.a.p.h.y.
How to get spam
It may also be an adolescent paid for each spam letter he sends. Spyware on the PC may have given him a new address. Also, did you receive a letter with a dozen people on the TO line rather than a group name or the sender's name, with the long list of recipients on the BCC line instead? All it takes is one insecure computer to put you in a spam list, which is then sold worldwide. Bots extract every e-mail address on a public web page.
New Version
I've had no trouble with 3.6.11, though one extension may have slowed. However, I receive mail in Thunderbird's and Apple Mail's Inbox only from people in my address book or previous recipients. The rest goes in Junk, which I peruse in text only. Spam, I forward to SpamCop and Knujon.
What to do with spam
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/7.html
What to do about spam attacks
I also have four mail accounts that use different spam filters. I ask some to reject spam, and one address filters that mail through the rejecting sites before coming to me. This eliminates most spam during an attack like yours. (My .Mac account is very good at filtering. It may use SpamCop and SpamHaus's lists.)
If you join SpamCop (free to send them spam), you'll have access to their forum. Spam slows the web, and the above doesn't help.
Source
Where did you get Firefox? Always use a malware-free archive. Mine came from MacUpdate, but there is VersionTracker, Softpedia, and more.
Last attempt
Finally, if you can't deal with that amount of mail, write your ISP or change your mailing address. I have two alumni accounts from Ivy League American schools. They each receive the same two dozen malicious spam letters every day. I keep the accounts as 'spam traps', to report malicious spam. Don't use your name in reports, and mail from spam accounts.
My ISP was phished for passwords from Russia, so reporting must be a good thing. (My ISP CEO advised that I continue to report; he could deal with the attacks.)
Example of a spam store
My Quicksilver was packed with security programs (even tripwire): I pretended to buy Guicci loafers from a beautiful spam for a clothing store in Canada. It came from a server near Beiing, and took me to Seoul, southern Brazil, Istanbul, and the Ukraine. The help line was near Istanbul. (Always near the border to another country.) They wanted to know what time of day I would NOT be home, and had an impressive list of seals, all just images. The store looked most professional and appealed to the ignorant.
Why must people know about spam designed to get their credit cards and all about seals? The US State Department and ICANN could stop much, and Knujon provides them reports.
Best of luck,
Bruce