Spammer Using My Email Address!
"Occasionally I get a bounced, or rejected email sent by someone else, with my email address in the From line. Do I have reason to be concerned? Comcast techs say it is just spam. I find that very weird."
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Strange but true! Your techs are correct when they say this is the work of a spammer, and it does NOT indicate any security breach on your computer.
Spammers generally don't like to poke their misshapen little heads out from under the rocks where they live, so they try to divert attention from themselves by making it look like someone else sent that "enlarge your body part" message.
It's trivially easy to spoof the From address in an email. In fact, most email software will allow you to change the From or the Reply-to address to whatever you want. Spammers use high-volume mail merge software that picks a From address at random from their database of addresses, and sometimes even the recipient address is forged.
The reason you get those bounce messages is because the spammers don't really care if some of their emails are sent to addresses that are invalid or defunct. It's all a numbers game to them. Some email servers are smart enough to look in the email headers and easily determine that the person in the From line (in this case, you) didn't really send the message. But others do not, so you get dumped on.
It's even worse when the spam *is* delivered to a valid address and that person blames YOU. In such a case, you can just explain that it was the work of an Evil Spammer who forged your address. If they give you flack, tell them to examine the Received lines in the email headers (most email programs let you view the headers if you poke around in the options) and they'll see that the source of the message was not your service provider.
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Posted by Bob Rankin on July 16, 2005 07:08 PM
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Article information: AskBobRankin -- Spammer Using My Email Address! (Posted: July 16, 2005 07:08 PM)
Printed from: http://askbobrankin.com/spammer_using_my_email_address.html
Copyright © 2005 - Bob Rankin - All Rights Reserved
Most recent comments on "Spammer Using My Email Address!"
Posted by:
kraester
24 Aug 2005
I wish more people understood how easy it is to spoof a "From address." For a few months last year, I had a casual business e-mail acquaintance who was conviced that I was sending her spam and viruses. On the other hand, I do like the abilty to change the "Reply To" address. I have multiple e-mail accounts, and I like being able to use the "Reply To" settings to help keep my business and personal e-mail account traffic somewhat segregated, or to have a respondent reply to an e-mail account I check more frequently than the one they initially used.
Posted by:
parita
18 Nov 2006
Can some one open my yahoo e-mail after i log out from account?
EDITOR'S NOTE: If you are using a public terminal, be sure to shut down the browser after signing off. Otherwise there might be traces of your email in the temp internet folder.
Posted by:
Karen
18 May 2009
Thanks for this article! It's helped me to provide an answer to my customers. Some don't believe me when I tell them there really isn't much you can do beyond trying to set up some filters that will filter out any IP (taken from the email header) and checked against the FROM email address.
Posted by:
Maria
10 Aug 2009
I am a victim of a spammer using my hotmail address to send unwanted ads to everyone in my contact list and to other people as well. While this article helped me to provide an answer to my family, friends and other contacts, I still have the following questions:
1) The spammer seems to have accessed my "contacts" list. How did that happen?
2) How do I make it stop? I receive tons of bounced email everyday and it is becoming a problem.
EDITOR'S NOTE: I doubt the spammer has your contacts list. More likely the spammer got a copy of a "forward" which had your address and all the others. And I'm sorry to say, you probably can't make it stop. The best you can do is create some Hotmail filters and send it to the junk folder.