Forged Name E-mail

[Joe]

A friend of mine named Jerry complained of receiving an e-mail on which my name was apparently forged. My last name is not Smith, but let's pretend it is for purposes of this example.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Bulk] Fwd: WEBSITE
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 14:13:31 -0600
From: Joe Smith<walshmd@cox.net>
To: jerryhroe@invalid.com


hello! http://boss.ba/ms/

Is there a (correct) name for this sort of thing? In other words, a search term to use to find useful information about it?

Is there anything I can do about this?

Did whoever is sending this access Jerry's address book or e-mails to find my name and try to fool Jerry that the e-mail came from me?

Does walshmd@cox.net have anything to do with generating this e-mail? Or is that just another red herring designed to throw us off the scent?

 

[Amy SF]

I've gotten fake emails from forged senders. Most of them have my own user name, but I've gotten someone else's, also, and it's obvious it's not from them. I've sent a complaint to my ISP, and they did nothing. I still occasionally get those fake emails. I don't know what else to do about it, either.

 

[Joe]

I've gotten fake emails from forged senders. Most of them have my own user name, but I've gotten someone else's, also, and it's obvious it's not from them. I've sent a complaint to my ISP, and they did nothing. I still occasionally get those fake emails. I don't know what else to do about it, either.

Well, I guess if it came from someone at cox.net I'd complain to them (cox.net). But I'm not sure whether that isn't another part of the phoniness of the whole message.

 

[Second Summer]

The issue that makes this a concern is that the sender obviously knows there is a connection between you and your friend. How could a spammer know that?

One obvious possible explanation would be to hack into either your email account or your friend's account.

Another possibility would be a security hole in Facebook:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57507648-83/spam-from-friends-is-actually-result-of-facebook-hole/

The fact that the email is not using your email address as the sender suggests to me it may be a variant of the FB issue. (Yes, even if an email claims to come from a certain person and email address, that doesn't mean it's for real, as both name and email address can be faked.) If so, that is not such a big worry as a hacked email account.

But in any case, this may be a good time to change your email account's password. Just to be sure.

 

[Calliegirl]

I've gotten emails like that from friends. It usually means they have a virus or their email has been hacked. I've talked to one of the friends whose email it had been sent from, and they had no idea. There wasn't a record of it in their sent file.

My guess is if you click on the link in the email, similar spam emails are sent to everyone in your contact list.

In Outlook/Hotmail, I click on the link under the junk menu item that says 'my friend's account has been hacked' when I get those, and let them deal with it

 

[Pirate]

I once had that problem. I changed my password, deleted my cookies and it didn't happen again. I think the issue involves crawling through your address book and spamming everyone in it.

 

[Joe]

But in any case, this may be a good time to change your email account's password. Just to be sure.

Thanks for the info. For what it is worth, I just changed my e-mail password. I'd bet it was Jerry's address book that was hacked, since he is the only person I've heard from about getting e-mails with my name forged in them.