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> Spam Protection Guide - 03
Spam Protection Guide - 03
EMAIL - Email Headers
As with everything that travels through the Internet,
every email has a Header containing identifying information. Our email programs
generally hide most of the technical info in the header, and present us with the
information we care about: the "From" field, and the "Subject"
line. They look like this:
SUBJECT: Here's the report I promised you.
FROM: John Smith <john.smith@example.com>
In every email you'll see this information, formatted by
your email program, sometimes the sender's info in the FROM field is made friendly
and just shows "John Smith".
The Internet protocol actually sets out a standard way
for email identifying information to show. The sender shows in this form:
Name <name@example.com>
with the angle brackets.
You can always type in an email address in the TO: field
of any email program in that form if you wish, e.g.
Hunter and Associates <service@hunterhost.com>
Knowing this may help lessen your dependence on address books to fill the fields
for you.
Sidenote. Many people get their email and Internet
configurations set up for them when they set up a new computer, and may feel unable
to configure programs other than the default programs. But the default settings
are the virus targets. There's usually not much to learn to configure new programs
in new ways, the knowledge is easily found by searching the Web for tutorials,
and the result is substantial freedom.
The email protocol makes provision for you to use a proper
name in combination with your actual email address, and you should always use
this and be conscious of its use, because it's a big part of how people separate
the junk from the real email when their mouse is hovering over "Delete".
The Internet email system allows you to identify every
piece of email with a proper name of some kind, combined with the actual email
address (inside the <> brackets), and a SUBJECT line. Provision is also
made for the date and time to show, as well as the Return To information, and
the TO: line. This is important information to screen, if you really want to stop
being at the mercy of email spammers and hackers with their viruses.
Some email programs obscure the identifying information
of an email, as a way of making it less daunting, but this does not help you.
Start learning how to see this information. If your email program doesn't show
it, explore the options or preferences to turn on visibility for this information.
All you generally need to see are the FROM and the SUBJECT. You should insist
on being able to screen your email simply by reviewing the sender and the subject.
Surveys show that around sixty percent of people choose
whether to read an email based on the FROM line, and forty percent based on the
SUBJECT line - these two lines are what identify an email to us.
Most spam can be readily identified by its unrealistic
subject and sender information. Here's some:
FROM: John Smith <honestjohn@NoWayThisIsSpam.com>
SUBJECT: lose 50 pounds guaranteed buying toner cartridges!!!!
People have become increasingly sharp-eyed at skimming
through the day's take of email junk and deleting honest john's commercial offerings.
But be aware that the Sobig.F virus was able to "spoof"
the FROM field of emails that it sent out across the Internet, since it used its
own SMTP code. This will become increasingly common as a threat, so that even
when the sender and the subject look valid to you, it may be an imposter email
sent out by a virus, containing something ready to hit you.
Sobig.E grabs email addresses from several different locations
on a PC, including the Windows address book and Internet cache files. Sobig.E
then tries to send a copy of itself to each address. It also uses one of the stolen
addresses to forge the source of the message, so that it appears to come from
someone else.
In July the Webber virus carried the subject line "Re:
Your credit application." If you opened the attachment you downloaded a trojan
horse that silently took over your computer and allowed a remote third party to
send or receive email - without your knowledge that it was happening. The first
you would learn of it might be the FBI knocking on your door. (Security from intrusion
is dealt with fully in Part 2 of this guide.)
These exploits will continue to grow, and will become more
clever. The real solution to all this is reading the email on the server,
before you download.
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