Someone's using my domain name to send e-mails

[ann smith]

I came into work this morning and I received an e-mail from myself. An
e-mail I never sent. From: (e-mail address removed) To: (e-mail address removed)

How is this possible?. The message was for weight loss pills. I look after
the computers in the office so I have to find an answer for this problem.

Also, last week, an employee received and e-mail from someone using our
domain name. (e-mail address removed). Right away I knew it was fake because we
don't use that kind of naming convention here at the office and I'm the only
one who sets up the e-mail addresses.

We use Outlook 2000 and exchange server 5.5. I read that people can change
the info in the internet header. Also, you can change your reply address in
your pop settings to do this. When I change my pop settings in another
account I have, it doesn't work. I would really appreciate an explanation
to all this. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote]

It's easy - they just merged your e-mail address into the TO: and FROM:
fields of the same message. They don't need to compromise your systems to
do it and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.

You can put anything you want in the FROM and REPLY TO fields of an outbound
message if you know what you're doing. I could send you e-mail that claimed
to be from (e-mail address removed) if I wanted to. The main reason for
spoofing your own address, in my opinion, is so that you can't add it to any
kind of blocked senders list or filter.

Spammers are lowlifes who will use any dirty trick they can find to get
around the filters we use to try and relieve ourselves of their trash. In
my opinion.


--
Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/schorr

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup. Mahalo!