THE WHATIS.COM WORD-OF-THE-DAY July 22, 2002 self-sending spam ______________ TODAY'S SPONSOR: The .tv Corporation
Save 30% on Web addresses! Not only will you get a great deal on your Web addresses, but you'll also get superior customer service, innovative products and services and a place that is easy to register and manage your Web addresses. Great names are still available. Register the names you want before someone else does! Check it out now: http://WhatIs.com/r/0,,4590,00.htm?the.tvcorporation ______________ TODAY'S WORD: self-sending spam See our definition with hyperlinks at http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci840088,00.html Self-sending spam is unsolicited e-mail that looks like you sent it to yourself: your name appears on the "from" line as well as the "to" line. For example, Lowell Thing might receive a message addressed to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" that purports to be from "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" In some cases (especially if you use one of the most common e-mail services, such as Hotmail or Yahoo) a message may appear to be sent from your exact e-mail address. Self-sending spam is one version of e-mail spoofing (disguising a message's "from" address so that it appears to be from someone other than the actual sender). The sender manually constructs a message header with their chosen information in it. E-mail spoofing is often sometimes used legitimately, for example, by someone spoofing their own address to manage their e-mail. However, spoofing anyone other than yourself is illegal. Senders rely upon two factors - curiosity and a positive emotional response - that make the recipient more likely to open or even respond to a message that seems to be from someone with their name. A recent study at McMaster University found that people respond more positively to e-mail messages sent (at least apparently) from people with names similar or identical to their own. Researchers, who sent out thousands of requests for simple information, found that the response rate was over 10 per cent higher for messages sent using the exact name of the recipient as the sender. Even if only one name matched that of the recipient, the response rate was higher than for messages from someone with a different first and last name. However, as people receive more of these messages and the novelty wears off, it is unlikely that self-sending spam will continue to elicit any positive response. RELATED TERMS: spam http://searchsystemsmanagement.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid20_gci213031,00.html header http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213480,00.html SELECTED LINKS: TechTV has an article about self-sending spam. http://www.techtv.com/news/internet/story/0,24195,3370159,00.html McMaster researchers find shared names make e-mail kindred spirits. http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/story.cfm?id=1296 ZDNet has an article, "Don't get mad, get even." http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2870424,00.html ______________________ WHATIS DISCUSSION FORUM | Challenge #8: Outbound mail failure Challenges are another learning tool where you (the reader) try to solve various real-life IT problems. Sometimes there's one right answer, but more often than not (just as in real life) there are several ways to approach the problem -- and that's why reading how other people would troubleshoot the Challenge is a fun way to learn. CHALLENGE #8: Bob is a network administrator at Alpha Industries. For the past two weeks, his users have been receiving returned messages from different servers saying that say their mail has been "banned from this site". What's going on? Could it be a worm? >>Take the challenge http://whatis.discussions.techtarget.com/WebX?[EMAIL PROTECTED]^3@.1dcfae0e/59!viewtype=&noconfirm=noconfirm ______________________ QUIZ #28 | Ethernet How much do you know about the most popular network technology in the world? Take our latest quiz and find out! http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci834253,00.html ______________________________ RECENT ADDITIONS AND UPDATES [1] electron rest mass http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci839930,00.html [2] tap http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci840080,00.html [3] SAML http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci839675,00.html [4] azimuth and elevation http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci838808,00.html [5] digital projector http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci839140,00.html ____________________________________________________________________ ::::::::::::::::::: WHATIS.COM CONTACTS ::::::::::::::::::: LOWELL THING, Site Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ____________________________________________________________________ MARGARET ROUSE, Assistant Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ___________________________________________________________________ :::::::::::::::::::: ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER ::::::::::::::::::::: Created by TechTarget (http://www.techtarget.com) TechTarget - The Most Targeted IT Media Copyright 2002, All Rights Reserved. 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