Has Your Email Been Spoofed?

by Mary C. Long

I wrote before about how your email might be sending spam without you knowing it - and I told you what to do about it.

But what if you changed your password, turned on two-step verification and logged out all other locations accessing your account and the bounce-back emails (from places you've never emailed) continued?

Well then, sir/madam - your email has been spoofed. 

And you're not going to like the rest of this post.

What do I mean by "spoofed?" Someone is sending emails and making them look like they're coming from you, placing your email address in the "sender" box. You'll know this is happening as you'll suddenly receive hundreds of 'out of office' replies from recipients to your "BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP OFFER" emails . . . which you never sent.

And you'll even get a few replies from fools desperately seeking ways to be robbed (apparently):

Why do spammers do this? Because they need email addresses that looks real to make it past the spam blockers everyone has in place.

How do spammers do this? Don't know and don't care - and you shouldn't worry your pretty little head about that either. But here are three things you DO need to know about it:

1. It can happen to anyone. 
2. There's no way to prevent it (though it seems accounts you don't use too much are bigger targets - so maybe use them or close them!).
3. All you can do it wait - and mark the bounce-backs as spam (for both plausible deniability and to help hasten the 'spam identification' process). After a while, the spammer will move on and find a new email address to spoof as it will have laid waste to your email address, having it marked as spam by said spam blockers and placing you on spam blacklists. Your email address is now useless to them - and to you - and this is a BIG problem if it's your business address!

Depressing, yes? 

We'll share ways to get your name off the "spam" list in a later post. Be sure to subscribe to our Ghost Tips so you don't miss it!