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Why does this SPAM message say it came from me? The "From" address in e-mail is comparable to the return address on a piece of snail mail. It can be set to whatever the sender desires, and is not necessarily accurate. Spam, including virus spam, often forges the "From" header in e-mail so that it appears to be coming from someone who has no relation to the mail itself. Often, viruses will pick a random address in the address book of an infected user, set that as the "From" address of the mail, and then pick another random address to send the message to. These messages should generally simply be ignored. Replying to the sender is not useful, since it is likely forged. The same applies for bounce messages that claim you sent spam to someone else. A virus likely set your e-mail address as the "From" line, and the recipient's mail server sent mail to you to tell you this, even though this is useless. If you know the spam or virus is coming from an MIT machine (as indicated in the headers by the originating host, NOT the sender's e-mail address), you can forward the message, without attachments, to security@mit.edu with a note indicating this. Be sure to include the full headers of the message. Network Security will then look into it and inform the owner of the infected machine, and possibly disable network service to the machine. This FAQ provides some more detailed information on how to interpret mail headers: http://web.mit.edu/stopit/spamfaq.html $Date: 2004/12/06 19:58:03 $ |
