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Junk Email Answers to common questions

Where did they get my address from?

Addresses are gathered from a variety of sources and it is not always clear which one has been used to obtain your address. Your email address is available to others in many situations, the most common being when you post to a Usenet news group or send email to an off campus mailing list. If somebody else posts email to a list with your email address in the Cc: field or forwards your email to others your address will be visible and available to anyone who receives the message. Email addresses are also available from directories and mailing list servers if you belong to any mailing lists. Furthermore, advertising your address on a World Wide Web page or giving it to others via the World Wide Web can provide another source of addresses to which to send junk email. Effectively anyone who makes significant use of the Internet can become a target for junk mail.

Why did I receive it when it was addressed to somebody else?

Junk email will often have an address other than your own in the To: field. Sometimes this will be the name of a list on a remote server and sometimes this will be the address of somebody else. This can cause confusion and give the impression that the email has been delivered to the wrong address. However, the To: field does not have to reflect the real delivery address, as the mail system uses other means to deliver the mail to the recipient. In the case of lists, the use of this feature is legitimate, but junk mailers will sometimes exploit this feature of email for purposes that are not entirely clear. The situation is very similar for From: fields. However, this is normally to prevent the true sender of the email from getting any replies.

Why did the junk email appear to come from me?

Junk email will almost always appear to be sent from someone other than the true sender. Sender addresses are normally set to bogus addresses or "throwaway" addresses on free email services such as Hotmail or Yahoo. A practice which has become more common recently is to set both sender and recipient to the same address. The purpose in all cases is to prevent any error messages or replies from being sent to the actual sender of the email, and there is no cause for concern.

In rare cases, the sender is set to the real address of an innocent victim. This can cause problems as some people will complain without checking the full headers to see where the email really came from.

Last Updated 04 Feb 2002. Please mail any comments to C.B.Bayliss@bham.ac.uk