How do email scammers spoof my email?
How do email scammers spoof my email?
I recently switched my mail/domain from Google to name cheap. I've been keeping a critical eye on my junk mail as the spam filtering doesn't seem as good.
I saw neat scam email from my own email adress. It was the usual "I am a hacker give me money" nonsense but the trick with them using my own email adress is pretty neat. I assume they've injected some sort of common replace string?
Just curious if anyone knows the trick here.
Update: followed the advice most of you have provided and spam mail has gone way down as a result. Leaving post here for the next poor sod who runs into these problems. Maybe Google will lead folks here instead of reddit.
Thank you kind strangers.
It is trivial to write a piece of software, or use existing email software, to forge the contents of the from: field in an email header. In fact, you can forge the entire email header if you feel like, and there's really nothing stopping anyone from doing it. The header information which includes the alleged sender of the email is just plain text. You can fire off any email containing any header -- forged or not -- at any mail server and the data will at least get there. What the mail server does with it afterwards is up to however it's configured.
There are various techniques that email providers and mail relays use to attempt to verify the integrity of email messages, including DKIM, reverse DNS or PTR record, and the Sender Policy Framework, and if any of these don't check out the mail server may reject incoming messages or automatically divert them to spam folders. This isn't foolproof, though, and some mail servers are more lenient than others. Many private mail servers are also misconfigured, or minimally configured, and allow pretty much any damn fool thing to get through.
When you send an email to a mail server, you can set the "FROM" address to literally anything. The mail server does not care and forwards stuff on, as long as you're authenticated. Anyone can run their own mail server anywhere that will dutifully just relay emails, which is what spammers often do. There are entries in DNS called SPF records (Sender Policy Framework) which mailservers use to validate on the receiving side that the FROM address coming from the mail server matches with a list of allowed mail servers IP address(es). If it doesn't match it gets sent to spam, or outright rejected (depending on if the record says ~all or -all). It is often not ideal to reject any message that fails this check, because if you have some local system that runs its own mailserver and sends alert emails it might not necessarily match.
I see. I think this is that case. It was in the spam folder. So it sounds like the new mail service is doing all it can here.
I'd also gotten a few fake Amazon fliers form like "vape demon69 dot com" which somehow didn't get marked as spam so I've been concerned that the junk prevention may really suck. But at least it seems to be marking the spoofed ones as junk.
you can set the “FROM” address to literally anything.
Hey all, "that guy" chiming in.
You can set the "FROM" address to any string that meets the specifications of the "Address Specification" section of the relevant RFCs (5322 and 6854, maybe others). Which is SUPER FAR from "literally anything".
I know this seems like some bullshit, but we're here answering the question for someone who clearly has little understanding of email internals. Hyperbole is bad in this context IMO.
If you're running your own domain and mail server with everything validated via SPF and DKIM etc then this layer of spam filtering won't do anything. Other spam filters like AI-based ones that look at the contents of message for spammy stuff need to take over after that point.
Fighting spam is constant cat-and-mouse battle and you'll never truly get rid of all of it.
I’d also gotten a few fake Amazon fliers form like “vape demon69 dot com”
That's obviously legit. Didn't you know it's illegal to lie on the internet?
Look up the instructions for your mail provider to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in your DNS so email services know which emails sent from your domain are actually legit. Without those records telling email servers what's valid and how to handle what's not, it's basically the Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme.
Thank you, I had to bug the support line a bit to figure it out, but they agreed I needed to use this guide and helped me out. My inbox is now a little safer thanks to your advice.
The trick is setting up your own email server that has some basic common security features disabled. That way they can send email from any address they want.
I would suggest setting up DMARC, SPF, DKIM. I have it setup so mail servers would reject/drop e-mails if they do not originate from specific mail servers. If a spammer tried to send an e-mail like you describe then it would be rejected by my mail server or mail server provider.
information: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/email-security/dmarc-dkim-spf/
There are many ways they could be getting your email, but first, why your email? Well, it's because it the easiest way for them to fake legitimate messages. Now, where are they getting them from? Most likely your socials or other accounts. One instance I've experienced was on offerup (don't use it, too many scammers).
Is it possible they actually accessed your account? Alternatively, do you have a lowercase “L” in your name that they could have replaced with a capital “I”?
No Ls also nothing in my sent box and it was marked as spam so rhe mail service knew somthing was up with it.
Dunno who's downvoting this, but that's honestly a valid possibility. The other answers explain a really important concept (it's really easy to fake from addresses) but these ideas aren't wrong.