Is this a scam?

[JackWilson]

[ QUOTE ]
"The "From" field of an email can easily be altered - it is not a reliable indicator of the true origin of the email."

How?

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I don't think I should tell you exactly how since you'd be tempted to try it.

Anyway, the basics:

You need to connect to a mail server on port 25 (SMTP). This is done through telnet. After connecting there might be some form of "protocol" (not to be confused with the computer term protocol) such as typing HELO.

Now the part where i'm gonna get vague because I think it's best [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

You would use this like a command line email client. You manually type in all the fields and so on. The thing is, you can put any address in the from field. Why? I guess it has some legitimate uses for users with aliases.

This is all made possible by the fact that the SMTP daemon does not authenticate users, i.e when you connect to the mail server you don't have to login. EDIT: for clarification, almost all servers nowadays require use of a secure connection for actually sending mail.

(And yeah, to people who know their stuff, I am aware that this explanation leaves out some very important details [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img])