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Email TO me FROM me???

This morning I received a spam email purporting to be FROM my own iCloud email address (which I do not use). Message header included the following:


Received-Spf: none (nk11p00mm-smtpin003.mac.com: ****@icloud.com does not designate permitted sender hosts) receiver=nk11p00mm-smtpin004.mac.com; client-ip=212.129.34.4; helo=scoopbay.net; envelope-from=****@icloud.com;

Received: from nk11p00mm-smtpin003.mac.com ([17.158.164.132]) by ms01513.mac.com (Oracle Communications Messaging Server 7u4-27.08(7.0.4.27.7) 64bit (built Aug 22 2013)) with ESMTP id <0NMY000HBKKFA550@ms01513.mac.com>


Can anyone explain how this happens and, more importantly, how to put a stop to it? Up until recent months, I thoroughly enjoyed using my me.com and (old) mac.com email because it never let spam through. This has changed, and I spend hours every week setting up rules to block BS senders and deleting spam from those who do it with legitimate-appearing email accounts. Email is becoming more of a chore than a convenience these days!


And BTW, if there's an address to report spam to Apple, it is well hidden in their website! 😟


<Personal Information Edited by Host>

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), 8 GB RAM

Posted on Apr 17, 2015 1:16 PM

Reply
6 replies

Apr 17, 2015 2:42 PM in response to GAdams

When people receive emails which appear to come from their own address but they haven't sent they naturally tend to be concerned: however it's most unlikely that anyone has hacked their account, they've just been targeted by one of two common spammers' techniques: both arise because it's all too easy to forge the 'from' address on messages to be something other than the real one.


There are two things that can happen. One is that the sender has forged the 'from' address to be the same as the 'to' address (so other people will see it coming from themselves, not you), presumably in the hope of confusing spam filters. It's harmless, if extremely annoying. Delete it (never ever answer spam or try to unsubscribe from it), and you don't need to be worried about it.


The other problem is that a spammer is forging your address as the 'from' address on a whole batch of messages. The first thing you hear about this is when you start getting bounce messages because the spam has been sent to non-existent addresses and is being bounced to you. There's no point at all in responding to it. It's infuriating but normally stops after a bit as they move on to another forged address.


There isn't really anything you can do about it: closing the account isn't really worth the hassle unless you are totally swamped, because you will have to tell everyone your new address. Apple can't really do any more than they already are about spam.

Email TO me FROM me???

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