WPCNR SERGEANT JOE FRIDAY'S REPORT. December 22, 2008 UPDATED DECEMBER 23, 2008: The communications department of a major company has passed along this explanation of a proliferation of internet scams which have increased lately as the economy has slowed and conditions have worsened for Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. America. WPCNR passes along this advice

The following, published yesterday before The New York Times  admitted it, too, was victimized by an identify assumer who sent a bogus e-mail  critical of Caroline Kennedy, purportedly signed by the Mayor of Paris, which the Times apologized for yesterday. The following advice is particularly interesting and relevant:

“Phishing” and “email address spoofing” are the common twists on Internet fraud, and are bold and deceptive attempts to obtain your confidential and sensitive information, including credit card numbers, passwords, social security number and other important financial information. They often masquerade as legitimate businesses or organizations, such as eBay, PayPal or your local bank. 

Appearing in both emails and on fraudulent websites, these schemes are often very believable on the surface.   The hope is that a suspicious recipient will just look at the sender, see it says "admin@ebay.com" or "service@paypal.com," and assume the message is legitimate. Spammers can alter the header of the email so that it appears the email message comes from someone else.   Please remember that what you see in the "From" field on an email has little bearing on where it was actually sent from.   

Here's what's going on:

In fact,  the scam may even look like an email comes from your own email address. When the spammers construct 'From:' addresses with your email address, there's literally nothing you can do.  Why do spammers go through all these steps? Two reasons: first, they naturally want to hide where they're sending from specifically so you can't block them. Second, by setting the "From" address to be yours, if the mail cannot be delivered, you'll still get it as the mail system attempts to return the mail to the sender identified by the "From:" address.

How did they get your email address? There are so many ways. One of the most common is  harvesting them from legitimate web pages or forums where you've provided your email address.

 What can you do about Spoofing?

Nothing.  If spoofers are constructing "From:" addresses with your email address there's literally very little you can do. You wouldn't want to block it because you'd be blocking yourself.

While (your company)  has put in place numerous procedures to catch these kinds of threats, incoming emails appearing to originate from (your company staff) may not be possible to be blocked.

 The best you can do for now is to use the delete key and simply delete the offending message(s).