Why Your Friends Are Calling You Fat, Among Other Things.
A came up to me and asked, “Are you saying I’m fat? I wanted to ask you about that e-mail you sent out about green tea.” I stared back at her with a dumbfounded look on my face. “I didn’t send you an e-mail like that.” Though I hadn’t sent the e-mail, it is very likely that she received an e-mail with my name on it. Here’s why: E-mail messages are simply a block of data with a header specifying who should receive the message, an optional subject line, and information about who sent the message. Unlike what most people seem to think, there is nothing that prevents someone from sending an e-mail with someone else’s e-mail address in the from field. A lot of people think they’ve been hacked when their friends tell them about e-mails from them that they didn’t send. This is typically not the case. A much more likely scenario is that a spammer has received an e-mail that someone has forwarded to their whole e-mail list. You’ve seen e-mails like that. “Forward this if you love Jesus.”...