Hi Doug, The "sender" information you see included with the email is easily faked. There are several parts of this information; return address, real name, mailserver used in sending, etc, but as it turns out, much of it is voluntarily appended to the email by the sender or sender's email server. If someone is running their own email server, as many of the spammers are, and as I am, it would be quite trivial to purchase (or alter) a mail server so that it would include meaningless or random info as the return path of the email. In many other cases, the email sender may use someone else's email server; perhaps a server that is not configured securely and therefore allows anyone to use it for sending. This "victim" server may be anywhere in the world, and the sender can be anywhere in the world. They don't have to be near to each other at all.
Several of the computer viruses insert fraudulent info into the message header, so that the email appears to come from somewhere that it did not. In many cases, the virus is programmed to choose 2 names from the person's Outlook email address book. It sends a virus-laden email to one address, and fakes the message to appear to be from the other. Anyway, my point is that the email "from" info is easily counterfeited, or even omitted, and can not be relied upon to accurately point to the message's true sender. If you or I send an email, yes that message header info will be accurate. But if an email sender wants to obscure themselves with false information, it is an easy matter to do. I agree that it would probably be helpful is we could catch & punish malicious emailers, but it's very difficult to identify the true perpetrator, and in some cases, the emails actually are sent by the virus-controlled computer belonging to an unknowing victim. It would not help anything to prosecute the innocent. Hope this helps. Best, Dave Nathanson Mac Medix On 9/29/03 5:33 AM, dmcadam [EMAIL PROTECTED] tapped the keyboard to say: >Hi Dave- >Thanks for the information. I'm not savvy on all this but when I see an >email that shows the sender and other information I automatically think >that computer tech people can trace it back to the original sender who, in >my eyes, is committing a crime against humanity. I explained all this in >my reply to Chris so I won't repeat myself again but I believe that when a >person is out of touch with the purpose of a thing one is out of touch >with the reality of that thing. People who knowingly cause damage to >property, to impede the process of advancing civilization and cause a >misuse of resources need to be straightened out somehow. I know I am >ignorant about emails and computers and I thought it seemed so simple to >trace emails back to their origin but so far nobody has answered this >question. > >regards, >doug ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
