Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 13 years 11 months 13 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

Have you ever gotten a spam message that looks like it came from your own e-mail address? Or, have you ever replied to a spam e-mail, assuming that it will go back to the person that actually sent it, only to have them tell you that they never did send it?

We recently had a web hosting support ticket where someone was convinced that our servers had been hacked, and someone was using their email to send out spam messages.

What happened was, they received a “reply” to a spam message that someone else received, that basically said to THEM, “hey, quit sending me spam!”

Our web hosting client scrolled down and saw that sure enough, it appeared as if this obscene pornographic e-mail solicitation came from them at their domain!

Of course, they were horrified, and sent us a support ticket.

In order for us to clearly show them that a spam message did NOT really come from their domain or their email address, it was necessary for them to view their mail header, which most people don’t know how to do.

An off-line parallel to this would be if someone were to call you on the phone and lie about who they were. You can’t STOP them from calling you, but if someone claims to be from the White House, and their caller ID clearly shows that it’s a different local phone number, then you know they’re lying, and you can hang up.

Unfortunately not enough people know that it’s possible to send e-mail claiming to be “from” a fake email address. I put together a two-minute video explanation, which I hope makes sense.

If you like what you've seen here, would you please share this?

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