Understanding E-mail Spoofing

Spam and e-mail-laden viruses can take a lot of the fun and utility out of electronic communications, but at least you can trust e-mail that comes from people you know – except when you can’t.

E-mail spoofing is a growing problem and has reached the point where you cannot rely on the information displayed in your e-mail client to tell you who really sent a message. Some jurisdictions have enacted laws against this form of “e-mail identity theft,” but the more effective solution is apt to be a technological one that makes it possible to authenticate the senders of e-mail messages. The most popular mechanisms currently in development are SPF and Microsoft’s Sender ID. In this article, we took a look at the problem and the proposed solutions.