Is it Difficult to Trace Spam?

Locating the senders of spam email

[porqpyn]

I have been getting quite a bit of spam lately. Does anyone know how these people work? I sent some blank email to the address and in a few minutes some came back.
Can these people be found by their email addresses? If not, how are they able to send the mail in the first place with a bogus address? If mail comes from [e-mail] why can't mail go to that address? Or is the address legit, but they block all email in return? Even so, why can't the govt. simply go to yz.com and immediately get the spammer?

[trillianjedi]

Ignore the "From" field in an email. You can put anything you like in there. I could send you a mail 'from' [e-mail] really quite easily - you couldn't reply to me, but you would get the mail.

TJ

[SethCall]

like you can look at all the header information, but even then, its difficult, because say you do find out which server the mail came from.

then u have to contact the admin of that server, and ask them to look through their logs (if they have any) and find out where this message came from...

then you have to ask the next server... and the next...

Ill sticky you a link porqpyn

[porqpyn]

Thanks for the link. I also got three of the "I represent a rich person who died in Nigeria (or Sierra Leone) and I want to share the riches with you" email.