# Spam email question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spam-email-question/108127>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 9, 2002, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spam-email-question/108127 "2002-05-09T18:17:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![LilShieste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@LilShieste](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilShieste)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2002, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spam-email-question/108127/1 "2002-05-09T18:17:41Z")

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I have noticed an increase in the number of SPAM messages I get every day, one set of emails I signed up for long ago (one of those online game things).

Anyway, I was wondering-- on some of the messages (that I didn’t sign up for) the **To:** field of the message doesn’t have my email address… or more weird, the **From:** field has my email address in it. How do people do this (I am assuming they do it on purpose, so they don’t get “caught” explicitly).

I am almost completely sure that it isn’t the virus described in one of the other threads here in GQ, so…

LilShieste

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**Author:** ![evilhanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba8739/32.png) [@evilhanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhanz)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2002, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spam-email-question/108127/2 "2002-05-09T21:03:34Z")

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The To and From fields in an email are entirely arbitrary. The sender can put virtually anything there and it won’t affect transport of the message. If you can stomach it, here’s an article that describes the various fields in the header of an email message: [Reading Email Headers](http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers/headers.html)