Spam email - appears sent to another address

[tedster]

I get a flood of USCE (there's an acronym that hasn't caught on!) or spam, that contains a different email address as the recipient, but it still comes to me.

How do they do that?

[sarkye]

I'm certainly no expert on this stuff but I believe it must be along the lines of sending a newsletter to multiple recipients.

You create a group in your 'address book' containing several names and the email is addressed (usually BCC) to the name of the *group*, which can be anything you like - such as an email address. The message is then sent to the members on the list but only appears to have been sent to the one recipient, the group name.

If I've assumed all this incorrectly I'd like to know, it's just my theory afetr receiving dozens of the rotten things myself every day.

[Slade]

It also has to do with the actual mail headers. Email programs generally only show you the "To:" field of an email, as the recipient(ie, you, or so it would think). But, there are a few other fields your email address could be in that would land it in your box.

This is also one of the means I use to block UBE(another acronym for spam). If the "To:" field isn't one of my email addresses, my email software throws the mail away.

You do have to watch it for some lists that are legit that don't use your address as its "To:" address, but I've only run across a few..

[toadhall]

Faking headers. This is from 1997:
[cv.nrao.edu...]

[minnapple]

I use the BCC feature to send to a small group of association members.

I send to myself and blind carbon copy to the other members.

I do this so all of the associations e-mail addresses are not exposed to each recipient.

[toadhall]

Geez, minnapple, I'm not sure that's the way bcc works. I believe the blind carbon copy hides the other recipients only from the main recipient (the To: field).

[sarkye]

re the BCC thing, this could be ugly . . . I'm sending myself a test message right now with three bcc's all coming to me too,

wait - here they come

[sarkye]

as I thought - and to put everyone's mind at rest (if anyone else was startled into second guessing themselves)... the only address that is exposed is the one in the 'To:' field. All BCC addresses are hidden.

The address of the one person receiving the message is also in the headers so - each recipient on the BCC list knows that the message was sent to him/her and also that it was sent to the person in the 'To:' field, but he/she does *not* know that it was sent to the other BCC addresses.

[toadhall]

Hi sarkye,
> he/she does *not* know that it was sent to the other BCC addresses.

And a good thing too!

Surprisingly though, I tested minnapple's method before posting and managed, somehow, to get the bcc's in a bcced message. (!) I'm just now trying to figure out why.

Check your sticky mail.