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9000 emails sent to one user within an hour

Hi all,
Yesterday, I had a user receive over 9000 emails in one hour - they where all newsletter style emails (including many from Mailchimp) in many different languages. The scary thing was that they all looked like legit subscriptions - headers looked legit etc. The user is hosted on exchange 2010 and it didn't affect any of his colleagues. Neither watchguard nor Xeams picked up on it and how I eventually got it under control was to increase the spam weighting of subscribe/welcome/subscription etc and then have them quarantined.
Apparently he hasn't subscribed to any newsletters but has anyone ever had this happen to them and how did it start?
Cheers

Scott C

People put their email address out on the net all of the time. They usually don't think of the repercussions.

Your user didn't necessarily have to subscribe to any newsletter. It could have been as simple as giving his email address to "groupon" or some other site. Or he could have clicked on one of those "don't send me this anymore" links. Once that is done, the spammer knows they have a legit address.

Then his address get sold and then you have the problem.

In the past I have dealt with this by educating the user and if necessary, creating a new email account for them.

T

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