Overview
Spam and virus authors often try to "spoof" a legitimate originating e-mail address to fool recipients into opening their message(s). The authors use web-crawling software to scan internet postings, message boards, and web pages for legitimate e-mail addresses which are subsequently used in this manner.
When someone's e-mail address is spoofed and used to send spam/mass e-mails a side-effect occurs with the supposed sender receiving a large number of automated bounce/reject messages sent by mail servers. Such backscatter occurs due to poorly configured mail servers dealing with undeliverable e-mail by using the "bounce" method - with the sender information on the incoming e-mail actually belonging to an unrelated third party.
The industry term for these messages is "backscatter". Recipients tend to see them as a form of unsolicited bulk e-mail or spam since they were not solicited by the recipients, are substantially similar to each other and are delivered in bulk quantities.
Handling Backscatter
If you are victim to spoofing and backscatter:
- Wait a day or two and delete the unwanted messages. Spammers will usually only briefly use a spoofed address and then move on to another victim.
- Use the filtering capabilities of spartanmail.msu.edu or of your mail client to send the messages to your trash.
It is also advisable to change your MSU NetID password for good measure. And as a reminder, be sure never to respond to phishing attempts.