|
|
|
|
|
I received an Email from you with a virus or spam!
Q:
I received an email from you with a virus! Are you aware?
A:
This email is not from us! We answer some-hundred emails a week and all of them are scanned with the latest Anti-Virus-Software before going out.
We saw email-spoofing happening to a bunch of bigger tattoo pages lately. None of these pages actually sent out viruses themselves.
Q:
But the email came from [any name]@tattooflash.info. It must be from you! No. What you are dealing with is called "spoofing", that means somebody else is pretending to be from tattooflash.info and simply using an email address from our page.
Q:
Well: that's just as bad! Why don't you do something about it? Is your security that weak?
Our security is just fine; there is nothing that anybody can do about people using his/her email address as sender. No mail server in this world can check, if the sender of an email is really who he/she claims to be. The mail server only checks, if the format of the email address is correct.
Here is a little example:
Just like your mail client (Eudora, Outlook or what ever you use) everybody can log in to a mail server on his network:
01) telnet whatevermailserver.com 25
02) 220 whatevermailserver.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.11.0/8.11.0
03) helo whatever.com
04) 250 whatevermailserver.com Hello yourpc [192.168.212.65], pleased to meet you
05) mail from:president@whitehouse.gov
06) 250 2.1.0 president@whitehouse.gov... Sender ok
07) rcpt to:you@any.com
08) 250 2.1.5 you@any.com... Recipient ok
09) data
10) 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
11) who am i today?
12) .
13) 250 2.0.0 h2L9Bm128933 Message accepted for delivery
The sender "president@whitehouse.gov" (line 5) is accepted (line 6) without any authentication. This could be any email address: bill.gates@microsoft.com, pope@vatican.vt or ANY of our email addresses at tattooflash.info, and neither the President, nor Billy, nor the Pope can do anything about it!
Q:
So what can I do, when I receive those mails?
The best suggestion is, NOT to get them in the first place. Install some anti-virus software, and it will filter dangerous emails in general, no matter from whom they are sent.
The second tip: If you don't expect an attachment, don't open it! No matter from whom it is.
Q:
Is there anywhere I can complain about people sending me viruses?
Yes. No matter if the return-address of an email is spoofed or not, you can find the real sender with the information in the message-header of the mail. Once you have the real sender, you can complain at their ISP.
CAREFUL!!! Only attempt this, if you know what you are doing! Depending on the email-software you use, you might have to open the message to get to the Header-information, and opening an infected mail is not something we would recommend!
If you know, that you can get to the header information without getting infected, or if your anti-virus software has deleted the attachment already, you can look for the first mail server that received the message. It takes a bit of practice, but it is not rocket science. If you want to do it easy and fast, use http://spamcop.net to file a complaint.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bookmark article at ...