Recently I’ve been getting Spams addressed to different e-mail addresses not my own. I didn’t think this was even possible. So, is there something wrong? Or is this just a new spam tactic?
This is perfectly normal, and has been since email began: you’re merely being BCCed (Blind Carbon Copied). This means I can send an email to, say, my mother, but BCC you when I send it. You’ll see the message in your inbox addressed to Mum, and there will be no record of your address being on the mail header. Mum will not know that you received a copy, either.
I got a few of those, too. It’s a blind carbon copy.
For convenience, mail clients do not show the full headers of email messages. If you wanted to, you could go into your preferences and “show full headers”. Then you would see all the addresses for the email.
Usually, spammers send to a a range of email addresses looking for valid ones. In my case, they sent to damn near all the combinations that started with “lee” had up to seven characters and ended in “2”. In english, it’s like sending to “leenmi2” “leenmn2” “leenmo2” …
The spammers are fishing. They are looking for a response, whether it be someone clicking on a link, returning a receipt or viewing the mail in html instead of text. In the html case, they might plant a transparent 1x1 pixel image. If you view the mail in html format, then your computer retrieves the image from the network. By playing with the name of the image or some other trick, they can determine which email addresses retrieved the image.
I’ll stop now. I had to look into this because I went from never getting spam to getting five in a week, and they didn’t seem to be addressed to me.
[Life of Brian] Five in a week? You lucky, lucky bastard. Sometimes I hang awake at night dreaming of only getting five a week. [/Life of Brian]
I get around hundred a day. In each account. And I have five accounts.
I wish I knew what made me so lucky. I could make a fortune consulting other people. I’m not shy about using my email address and don’t take special measures to avoid spam.
Just to avoid any flames, I was not complaining about the five spam messages in a week. I am tickled pink to be one of the lucky few.
People who were BCC’d on a message do not show up in the message headers. BCC wouldn’t really be “blind” if they did.
Also, if I recall correctly, the To: field in your e-mail (or the CC: field or the BCC: field) doesn’t have to match up with who the mail actually goes to. When somebody connects to your mail server, at a certain point they issue a
RCPT TO:<address>
commands that actually controls where the message goes. It doesn’t refer to the To: header at all. I just sent myself a message that said:
in its entirety. If your mail program supports viewing full headers, you can usually get more information from the Received: headers.
[nitpick]
Are you sure you’re not thinking of “At Last the 1948 Show”?
[/nitpick]
No, he’s thinking of the scene in “The Life of Brian” where Brian is thrown into prison, and gets harassed by the long-time inmate hanging in chains on the wall … “Well, you must be their real golden boy … they must think the sun shines out your ass.” “What are you talking about?! Didn’t you see him spit at me in the face?” “Spat at in the face! Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be spat it in the face. Sometimes I hang awake at night dreamin’ about it.”
You learn something new every day (and it was a long time since I last saw it).