Spoof Emails
E-mail spoofing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaE-mail spoofing is a term used to describe fraudulent e-mail activity in which the sender address and other parts of the e-mail header are altered to appear as though the e-mail originated from a different source. E-mail spoofing is a technique commonly used for spam e-mail and phishing to hide the origin of an e-mail message. By changing certain properties of the e-mail, such as the From, Return-Path and Reply-To fields (which can be found in the message header), ill-intentioned users can make the e-mail appear to be from someone other than the actual sender. The result is that, although the e-mail appears to come from the address indicated in the From field (found in the e-mail headers) it actually comes from another source.
Occasionally (especially if the spam requires a reply from the recipient, such as the '419' scams), the source of the spam e-mail is indicated in the Reply-To field (or at least a way of identifying the spammer); if this is the case and the initial e-mail is replied to, the delivery will be sent to the address specified in the Reply-To field, which could be the spammer's address. However, most spam emails (especially malicious ones with a Trojan/virus payload, or those advertising a web site) forge this address too, and replying to it will annoy an innocent third party.
Examples of Phishing Emails:
