Save Yourself From “Yourself”: Stop Spam From Your Own Address
Friday, September 22nd, 2017I just got junk email … from me!
It is surprisingly common for users to receive Spam email messages that appear to come from their own address (i.e. “joe@domain.com” gets a Spam email addressed so it appears to be from “joe@domain.com”). We discussed this issue tangentially in a previous posting: Bounce Back & BackScatter Spam – “Who Stole My Email Address”? However, many users wonder how this is even possible, while others are concerned if their Spam filters are not catching these messages.
How can Spammers use your email address to send Spam?
The way that email works at a fundamental level, there is very little validation performed on the apparent identity of the “Sender” of an email. Just as you could mail a letter at the post office and write any return address on it, a Spammer can compose and send an email address with any “From” email address and name. This is in fact extremely easy to do, and Spammers use this facility with almost every message that they send.
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LuxSci’s Basic Spam Filtering service has just been augmented to include Bayesian analysis. with Bayesian analysis, each user can train his/her own Spam filters with examples of what that user considers “Spam” and “not Spam”. With enough examples, Bayesian analysis allows for the classification of new messages by their likelihood to be Spam or not and this drastically increases the accuracy of your Spam filtering.
The Internet is rife with fake and forged email. Typically these are email messages that appear to be from a friend, relative, business acquaintance, or vendor that ask you to do something. If you trust that the message is really from this person, you are much more likely to take whatever action is requested — often to your detriment.
2014 has been a year of public security awakening … high profile breaches, extensive and terrible vulnerabilities in pervasively used software, and a fear and awareness of eavesdropping by governments and covert organizations.
