Some of our customers may have noticed a drastic increase in the amount of spam or returned emails they have received.
In many cases, this is caused by the increasingly prevalent problem of "spoofing."
What is Spoofing?
"Email Spoofing" is a nasty trend in spam. Spoofing may occur in different forms, but all have a similar result:
A user receives email that appears to have originated from one source when it actually was sent from another source.
Email spoofing is often an attempt to trick the user into making a damaging statement or releasing sensitive information (such as passwords.)
A common side effect of spoofing is returned email. If the spoofed message is rejected by the intended email,
the return or failed to deliver message is sent to the email address the spoofer used.
How does spoofing occur?
The concept is the user simply changes their outgoing mail to another person's email address. This results in email(s) being sent that look like they have originated from someone else's email address.
Spoofers can retrieve email addresses by using viruses such as "MyDoom." The virus essentially grabs email addresses listed on the computer's email program, or stored in other places on the computer's hard drive. It then starts using the email addresses it retrieved as outgoing mail addresses to send spam/viruses onto others.
What can I do about spoofing?
Here are a few steps you can take when dealing with spoofing:
1) Never respond to the spoofed email or to requests for personal information from email.
Responding to the spoof also verifies you as an active email account and could result in more spam.
2) We strongly recommend you protect your computer from viruses by using a virus protection package. Here is a list of some recommended virus protection programs:
Free
Paid/Purchase
