Spoofing is another way the evil spammers wreak havoc on the world. Spoofing is when a spammer manipulates the “from” field in an email to say it’s from someone else. Not only that but sometimes they’ll take it to the next level. The spammers will actually send you email from yourself. OK, it’s not really from you. You’d know if you abandoned your current career for one pitching Viagra via email but you know what I mean.

One question people have after they’ve been spoofed is will they be held responsible for the spoofed messages. In other words, while you may know that you haven’t made the aforementioned career change how will everyone else know that? Don’ t worry. Your name won’t appear on a blacklist of spammers. While spammers are able to change the appearance of the “from” field there is other information contained in the email that they can’t change. These are technical details that you and I don’t usually look at. However the folks making the blacklists do look. What the technical details will reveal is that things just don’t match up. It will be clear that you’re not the source of the spam.

Is there anything you or I can do to stop spoofing? Not really. Web hosts and companies that sell anti-spam software are working hard to stop spoofed email messages from being delivered. They’re working on systems that examine that from field and compare it with that technical information contained in the email. If things don’t match up the email is labeled as spam an not redelivered. In other words we’ll never be able to stop spoofing but the technical community is making strides toward identifying spoofed emails and making sure those messages don’t get through.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 10:51 am and is filed under E-mail, Spam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.