Delivery Failure with E-mail Coming Out of Nowhere? E-Mail Spoofing  

As if spamming isn’t enough to be annoyed at, e-mail spoofing is a hot tactic these days.  This article will explain a little of how a spammer uses your e-mail address to send other spam and why you end up with a ton of delivery failure notices in your inbox.

The most common kind of spoofing is when a computer has been infected with a virus and randomly sends out spam while the user is away from the computer (idle time).  Most of the time this happens to computers that do not have the latest updates to the operating system and/or protection utilities (anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.)   So, why is it you are getting the delivery failure notices?  Simple really,  your e-mail address is in some-body’s address book and the spammer choose to pick on your e-mail address send as many e-mails as possible under your name before it is flagged as spam or black listed.  So what can you do to stop it?  You can’t, but you can protect yourself and prevent it from ever happening on your computer….to bad for the computer sending it though.

•  Never open an attachment that you do not know who it is from or it seems odd and unlikely to have come from that person.

•  Put attachments into a special folder and have your anti-virus (up-to-date) scan it before opening.

•  Most virus’ spread themselves from an address book, so you are more likely to receive a virus from somebody you know, than somebody you don’t.  If you find that somebody you know has sent you a virus, be kind and let them know they are spreading virus’ and need to get their system disinfected.