|
Spoofed Emails & Fake Headers
E-mail
spoofing is
a term used to describe (usually fraudulent) e-mail
activity in which the sender address and other parts of
the e-mail header are altered to appear as though the
e-mail originated from a different source. E-mail
spoofing is a technique commonly used for spam e-mail
and phishing to
hide the origin of an e-mail message.
By changing certain properties of the e-mail, such as
the From, Return-Path and Reply-To fields
(which can be found in the message header),
ill-intentioned users can make the e-mail appear to be
from someone other than the actual sender. The result is
that, although the e-mail appears to come from the
address indicated in the From field
(found in the e-mail headers), it actually comes from
another source.
-www.wikipedia.com
An Email header is
the information included in the email that tells it Who its From, Who
its To, Time/Date, Subject, etc.
Any of this information can be disguised or altered. You may receive an
email from
billgates@microsoft.com but that does not mean its from him. You may
receive an email on your
bob@mywebsite.com
but it may say it was sent to
bob@myoldwebsite.com which you no longer use. It just means that's
something the spammers had in their records and are hoping to get you to
click on it.
An email may even appear as if its from someone in your company. You may
get an email from
techsupport@mywebsite.com asking for a password or other
information. If you have any doubts at all about the legitimacy of
an email, contact the sender by Starting a new email or calling them.
Never Reply or click on anything in the suspicious email.
Once someone gets infected, their computer often sends out emails to
everybody in their address book without their knowledge. So you may
receive an email from a friend that you get emails from all the time,
but this time it may have a joke or say there is a video they want you
to see. You click on it, trusting its from your friend and now your
infected.
The only safe way is never to click on links in emails that are joke
type emails, emails from banks, eBay, or other popular websites. If you
were to receive an email from ebay.com for example asking you to log in
or change your password, don't click on any links. Instead open your web
browser and type in www.ebay.com and go to the website directly.
When IS it safe to click on a link in an email? When you
know its coming.
Example:
1) A friend told you they were going to send you a link to a website for
you to see.
2) You went to a website and requested to change your password and they
say they will email you a link to change it. You expect this so a few
moments later the email arrives.
|
