Tech Tips » email spoofing

Get your physical documents delivered in your electronic inbox

admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:34:19 +0000

You receive documents and letters from companies, banks, government etc. off and on that are delivered in your mailbox. But as you have been addicted to internet and are used to checking mails over the internet, you sometimes wish that such physical documents also be delivered directly to your email inbox. If you are a resident of US, then Zumbox get your documents delivered to your inbox.

To begin receiving documents in their email inbox, users first need to sign up for the service by entering their location, i.e. their full address and then wait for the letter sent by Zumbox to their physical address with a PIN. Users need to enter that PIN to be authenticated for the service and unlock their electronic mailbox. After you sign into your account, you can also turn off the paper delivery system for the companies you were previously receiving documents from and just receive documents electronically.

There are a lot of advantages of Zumbox. Like your mailbox won’t be cluttered with piles of papers and documents and you won’t have to deal with those bulky catalogs. When you receive documents electronically, there will be much security and it will be easier to archive the documents. The service is free for companies sending account-based mail.

But there might be some downsides to it. You will not be secluded from junk mails as Zumbox’s customers can send you “special offers” which can literally be a junk to you. Moreover, your address and location can be known to a lot more people. You should also be careful of verifying the authenticity of the emails as email spoofs can also be sent to you.

Anyway the benefits are absolutely tempting. If you are a US resident, then think of getting your documents delivered directly to your email inbox.

© Skydweller for Tech Tips, 2009. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: account, address, documents, email, email spoofing
account, address, documents, email, email spoofing

Protect yourself from spoofs

admin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:25:00 +0000

In my last post I had mentioned about email spoofing and its impacts. These tricks may help you to recognize spoof emails and block them to some extent.

In spoof emails you might notice abnormal urgency asking you to reply back. They can send spoof emails in the name of PayPal and ask you to reply as soon as possible or your account gets banned. They may also deceive you saying that some unauthorized transaction occurred in your account and therefore ask you to feed your personal details.
If it is a spoof email, you can find a number of false links there. Hover your mouse over the links to see the URL which the link points to. If the link does not point to a relevant site, you can easily recognize that it is a spoof. Do not click on such links because they might collect your personal data and may also install spywares on the system.
Some emails may ask you to enter your personal information. Companies like Pay Pal never ask you to enter your personal details. So ignore such mails.
If you get an email asking you to enter your account information or update your account and give you a suspension warning don’t hurry. If you get any email from eBay check for the same message in My Messages inside your eBay account too. In My Messages you only receive emails that are genuinely from eBay. If the emails in your personal email account do not match the email inside My Messages, then be sure that it is a spoof.
You can check if the link really goes to The URL where it is supposed to go to. This is used to see if the real URL matches the address URL. Copy and paste this javascript code in the address bar of your browser and see the results. This can also help you recognize spoof emails or sites.
javascript:alert(%22The real URL is: %22 + location.protocol + %22//%22 + location.hostname + %22/%22 + %22\nThe address URL is: %22 + location.href + %22\n%22 + %22If the server names do not match, this may be a spoof.%22);
Sites where you enter your personal information must be preceded bye https where “s” stands for secure. If there’s no https, you are not in a secure session.
Spoof emails often contain misspelt spellings, horrible grammar and typos. Reputed companies are conscious about spellings and grammar. This can also help you recognize spoof emails.
Sometimes you can easily recognize spoof emails just by seeing the header. Amateur spoofers may not be able to fake the email address. You can see the headers in the following ways:
Outlook: select View/Options.

Outlook Express: select Properties/Details.

Pine: type H.
Eudora: click on the “Blah Blah Blah” button.

Yahoo! Mail: select “Full Headers.”
Hotmail: go to Options/Mail Display Settings/Message Headers and select “Full.”

Netscape: select View/Headers/All.
Check the header and tally the sender’s name and email address and check if it is matching. But only amateur spoof mailers will make such mistakes. Then look at the “received” filed. It’ll look something like: received from John Harvey(123.456.789.1). The number suggest the IP address. Now go to command prompt and type nslookup 123.456.789.1 ie nslookup (ip address), then hit enter. This will show you the SMTP server. Check to see if it is the one that matches with the SMTP server of a trusted company. But remember, professional spoofers can change IP address as well.
Take note of files attached to your emails. Remember trusted sites like PayPal, or sites of Banks never send such attachments. Don’t download such attachments, they might contain virus, trojans, spywares or malicious softwares.
Sites that provide security while adding personal information do not have pop ups. Neither do they look much flashy. This way also you can recognize spoof emails.

© Skydweller for Tech Tips, 2008. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: email, email security, email spoofing, recognize spoof email
email, email security, email spoofing, recognize spoof email

Email Spoofing

admin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Email spoofing is a very big trouble for the internet users since long. Emails with forged headers, where the senders name are altered to make it seem like it came from some other source is called a spoof email. The activity is thus called email spoofing. This can cause a great deal of trouble to anyone because it might make the email receiver to actually believe that the email came from the original source. So if the one sending the spoof email has some basic details about the person he is sending the email to, he can use filthy tricks to make a lot out of it. People should become careful and save themselves from spoofs.

It is easy to send spoof emails because the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) doesn’t require authentication. If the server has been configured in a way to allow connections to the SMTP port, anyone can connect to it and begin sending spoof emails. The email address that appears to be of the sender can be a valid address or an invalid one.

Email spoofing is done in a lot different ways. There are dedicated email spoofing softwares that can make the process a breeze. The softwares are now used widely by mass mailing worms to hide the identity of the sender and send tons of spoofed emails.

There Trojans and worms that are created to harvest email ids from the contact list of a person’s or an organization’s email. So if such worms infect the system, they can send all of the contacts to their feeder. So all of those addresses can be used in the form fields while sending emails. This can cause a big predicament to organizations where email is sent with content filtering gateways.

This can also cause a big trouble when the spoofed email appears to be from a company to an individual. Suppose you have a gmail account. You get an email from the official google email address which says that they need to verify your email address and password to let you enjoy their new services. You, unaware of the fact that you are being spoofed, fill in the required fields and reply back. And the dread is known to you. The email addresses extracted from a certain person’s address book, can also be used in such a way as to send reciprocal emails other. So, if precaution is not taken email spoofing can invite appalling conditions to anyone.

© Skydweller for Tech Tips, 2008. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: address, email, email security, email spoofing, Software, spoofed emails
address, email, email security, email spoofing, Software, spoofed emails

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