My mom just called me in a panic because she suddenly has hundreds of emails in her inbox signing her up for various websites. These are for businesses all over the world, and the usernames used to sign up are inconsistent (Wayne Anaed, Michael Vek, etc). Buried among these emails is a receipt for a new Samsung laptop. I am not sure if that’s real, but I’m inclined to believe it is because the billing address and last four digits of her credit card are correct. We are trying to confirm if that’s a real order directly with the vendor.

I am just hoping someone can help me understand what this scam is so I know what we need to do to protect her. Is all this just designed to bury the confirmation email for the laptop amid a sea of spam so that hopefully she wouldn’t notice the credit card theft? Should we simply delete all these account registration emails? Mark them as spam? Block the sender? She has gmail if that matters. Thanks in advance for the help!