Email spoofing is when the sender changes the header information to make it appear as if the email came from a different address. It is often used for spam and scams, including phishing, to steal personal information or spread viruses. Spoofing is easy to do using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and can be done by robot programs. Spoofed emails can be illegal, and users should be cautious of opening attachments or entering private information.
Email spoofing describes the practice of an email sender changing the information in the header of an email to reflect a source email address that is different from the address from which it was actually sent. envoy. Since email spoofing is not difficult to do, the average email user will encounter email spoofing on a regular basis. While some users spoof an email address for legitimate reasons such as replying to a business email from a personal inbox, the practice is usually used in email spam and scams. Email spoofing can be used to steal personal information or to confuse a user into downloading a virus.
Essentially used to make an email look like it came from something it wasn’t, the process of spoofing an email is almost as easy as writing the wrong return address on a piece of mail. The standard used for sending email over the Internet, called Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), allows a user to write in any correctly formatted email she wishes. The source address of an email does not have to match the sending address to be used in an SMTP system. Spoofed emails are usually sent by robot programs designed to mass send spoofed emails.
There are many scams using the email spoofing features of SMTP. Email spoofing can be used to trick a user into opening a virus attachment in an email that appears to be from a friend. Companies that send spam emails often spoof your email address due to legal issues associated with violating federal and local anti-spam laws. Sending a forged email header or email with a subject line designed to trick the email user is illegal in the United States.
One of the more serious types of email scams associated with spoofing is phishing. Phishing occurs when an email sender makes an email appear to come from a legitimate source to harvest information such as usernames, passwords, credit card information, and other private data. Emails designed to mislead email users into entering private data often look almost exactly like real emails sent by the company, right down to the look of the company website and the email and the company logo. These scam emails are usually made to look like a commonly used business or service such as a bank, credit card company, or online florist. Although most phishing emails are sent randomly to whatever email address spammers have been able to glean, some spammers target specific groups of web users whose email contact information may have been accidentally hacked or sold by a company that legitimately harvested your email address.
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