Spoofing is when a spammer manipulates the “from” field in an email to say it’s from someone else. Not only that but sometimes they’ll take it to the next level. The spammers will actually send you email from yourself.
One question people have after they’ve been spoofed is will they be held responsible for the spoofed messages. Will your account be flagged as a spammer? Don’t worry. While spammers are able to change the appearance of the “from” field there is other information contained in the email that they can’t change. These are technical details that you and I don’t usually see. However the folks making the blacklists do examine all those technical details. It will be clear that you’re not the source of the spam.
Is there anything you or I can do to stop spoofing? Not really. Web hosts and companies that sell anti-spam software work hard to stop spoofed email messages from being delivered. We’ll never be able to stop spoofing but the technical community is making strides toward identifying spoofed emails and making sure those messages don’t get through.
