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How can Spammers and Hackers Send Forged Email?

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

Everyone has seen spam messages arrive with a “From” address that is your own address, a colleague’s, a friends, or that of some company that you work with or use.  These From addresses are forged to help the messages (a) get by your spam filters, and (b) get by your “eyeball filters”.

But how are these folks “allowed” to do that?

When email was first developed, there was no concept of the need for security; protections against identity theft and forgery were not part of the plan.  As a result, it is actually trivial for one to send an email with a forged “From” address and even some forged “Received” tracking lines by just connecting to your target’s email server and telling it whatever you want.

Let’s try to send an email to the address “testuser@luxsci.net” pretending to be from “Bank of America”.  The purpose of this exercise is not to teach you how to send forged email so much (this is not a new technique) as to set the stage for understanding how to detect and combat these kinds of messages.

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Tags: Bank of America, filters, forged email, phishing, smtp, spe, telnet
Posted in LuxSci Library: The Technical Side of Email
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How to Tell Who Supports SMTP TLS for Email Transmission

Tuesday, January 27th, 2015

SMTP TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the mechanism by which two email servers, when communicating, can automatically negotiate an encrypted channel between them so that the emails transmitted are secured from eavesdroppers.

It is becoming ever more important to use a company that supports TLS for email transmission as more and more banks, health care, and other organizations who have any kind of security policy are requiring their vendors and clients to use this type of encryption for emailed communications with them. Additionally, if your email provider supports TLS for email transmission, and you are communicating with people whose providers do also, then you can be reasonably sure that all of the email traffic between you and them will be encrypted.

How do you find out if someone to whom you are sending email uses a provider who’s servers support TLS-encrypted communications? We will take you through the whole process step-by-step, but first let us note some 6 important truths about TLS connection encryption.

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Tags: dig, dns, ehlo, mx records, nslookup, smtp, smtp connection, starttls, tls, tls support
Posted in LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy, Popular Posts
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Case Study: Halloween Express Chooses LuxSci for Large Scale Seasonal Email Marketing

Monday, January 26th, 2015


Halloween Express is one of the most aggressive and dynamic Halloween chains in the United States. Started in 1990, Halloween Express has both company owned and franchised locations throughout the U.S. Their success is based on offering the largest selection of Halloween merchandise available anywhere.

Halloween Express chose LuxSci in 2014 for their massive seasonal email marketing needs.  LuxSci resolved the issues that they experienced with previous providers, saved them money, and enabled an extremely successful online campaign involving millions of email messages sent in a short period of time.

Halloween Express was very pleased that they could quickly scale up sending for the Halloween season, and then back off to a lower level for the rest of the year, without compromising their sending reputation.  They are so satisfied with their experience, that they are staying on for 2015 and are moving their business email services for their hundreds of employees over to LuxSci as well.

This is the story of Halloween Express’ timely switch to LuxSci’s dedicated High Volume SMTP Relaying service.

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Tags: email marketing, Halloween Express, high volume, private labeling, smtp
Posted in Case Studies, Email Marketing
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Exchange ActiveSync (MobileSync) vs Good Old IMAP + SMTP

Monday, October 6th, 2014

Many years ago, it used to be that if you had a cell phone that had an email program included, you could configure using IMAP and SMTP to allow you to check email and send email…. just like how a desktop email program worked.

This is still the case, of course. However, as far back as 1996, Microsoft introduced the first version of “ActiveSync”, a protocol designed to allow mobile devices supporting it to synchronize email, calendars, tasks, and contacts with Microsoft’s Exchange server. ActiveSync has evolved over time, getting faster, offering support for use in every modern mobile device. While ActiveSync was designed to work with the Exchange server, these days it also works with other non-Exchange services that can talk the “ActiveSync language,” e.g. LuxSci through its Mobile Sync service.

In general, ActiveSync is much better than using IMAP and SMTP, though there are a few small corner cases where IMAP may be better for you. Below, we shall compare them from an end-user perspective … trying to shed some light on “which is better” from a practical point of view.

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Tags: activesync, android, Exchange ActiveSync, imap, iOS, push email, remote wipe, smtp
Posted in LuxSci Library: Email Programs and Devices, Mobile
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Do you need a VPN for Secure Email in a Wireless Hotspot?

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

LuxSci has been approached by many people asking for VPN (Virtual Private Network) services.  When we ask them why, they indicate that they use wireless hotspots (like at Starbucks and other public places) that are insecure and untrusted and they want to be sure that their email is secure and encrypted there.*

Note that even if the hotspot is password protected and “secure”, that does not mean that it is “trusted”.  The hot stop administrators or other users of that hotspot could still try to intercept your Internet traffic.  So, just because it is a “secure” hotspot with the little lock next to it and a password that you must enter, do not assume you are safe at all.

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Tags: eavesdropping, email security, hotspot, imap, pop, secure email, smtp, ssl, tls, vpn, webmail, wireless
Posted in LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy
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