OpenEuphoria

RE: [OT] postmaster at netbet.com: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

• Posted by eugtk at yahoo.com Aug 24, 2003
• 422 views

--- Al Getz <Xaxo at aol.com> wrote:

> Hello there,
> 
> With all this talk about Emails, Topica
> unsubscribing, and
> SoBig, Im starting to understand how i sometimes get
> emails
> from myself   I wonder how they forge the return
> address?
> 
> I havent gotten an email supposedly from myself in a
> long time,
> but recently had gotten a few.  Could it have
> something to do
> with Topica trying to iron out some bugs or
> something like that?

Not likely.

> The emails are usually some kind of sales pitch, but
> nothing
> harmful so far ( event_KnockOn(h_Wood) ).

You don't actually open those e-mails, do you?!?
Anyway, there are basically 3 types of e-mail going 
round:
1. "Bugs" which often contain only an html link to an 
image stored somewhere. The link usually contains 
your address or an identifying code so that the
spammers 
can confirm that they used an active address, and that

there's someone there who reads the mail. 
2. Ads for useless stuff. These often serve the same
purpose as #1.
3. Worms/Viriii - such as sobig.

In cases 1 and 2, they use addresses harvested off the

internet, and often forge the sender's name from that 
same list. Some are so careless they use the same name

for both sender and receiver. 

In case 3, your name just happens to be on whoever's 
computer has the sobig worm. So when an e-mail
bounces, either because it was sent to an invalid 
address, or - as we're seeing in the last few days - 
because it was sent to a valid address where the 
mailbox was overflowing, then it gets bounced back 
to the forged sender (you).

The only way this is ever going to stop is if Outlook 
Express is banned. There are lots of good
alternatives,
such as Pegassus and Eudora.

Irv