Help! My email is being spoofed

[Jarmusch]

I was under the impression that most of these spoofed emails were sent only to the owner of the email address as a way to get his attention and make him open the email. I too get a few of these now and then but I made a filter that sends any email with my address in the 'From' field straight to the trash and never worried about it.

Is there a way to know if these spam emails are actually being sent to others with your email address on it other than receiving complaints?

[SheepGuy]

Originally Posted by Jarmusch

Is there a way to know if these spam emails are actually being sent to others with your email address on it other than receiving complaints?

You'll see a bunch of "your message could not be delivered" type messages.

[Jarmusch]

Originally Posted by SheepGuy

You'll see a bunch of "your message could not be delivered" type messages.

Ouch.. I've only been receiving fake spoofed emails then, thank god!

[lassiter]

Originally Posted by Jarmusch

I was under the impression that most of these spoofed emails were sent only to the owner of the email address as a way to get his attention and make him open the email.

Maybe there's a few like that, but nah. The reason you often will see your own address as the "from:" sender on a lot of spam is because the less-bright spammers misconfigure their spamming programs and end up putting the "to:" addresses (from their CDs full of email addresses) in the "from:" field as well. Which is silly, since you probably would know if you'd sent yourself an email advertising "V-*i -@--Gr-*a."

Plus you may get things that appear to be coming from "ineedhits" - which is a spamming service, but often the user isn't bright enough to alter the default "from:" field with his own set of fake addresses, so it becomes easy to tell it's an obvious spam ploy.