Self sending spam

November 12 2008

In the foot lashes of recent Obama spam mails, a new and growing trend has been spotted by Spamfighter. Particularly from last week, it has come to Spamfighter's attention that a disturbing number of people are receiving so called "Self Sending Spam". The "spammer" cheats the mail servers to believe that the address is sent from the users own mail account. The recipient is lead to believe that they are sending an E-mail to their own E-mail Account. Another variation of "self Sending Spam" is when users get an E-mail from a friend or a colleague with the same domain name not expecting it to be spam. Users are more prone to open these mails when it comes from somebody we know well.

This action bypasses multiple Spam filters- and tools as they are based on filtration by a combination of keywords and E-mail addresses.

This method used by cyber criminals is not new but lately its use has risen sharply. Statistics shows that self sender spam has doubled in the last week but still only a fraction of every spam mail constitutes "Self Sending Spam" at the moment. It is bound to rise if spammers are having success this way.

Although Spamfighter has prevented further damage to our users we urge people to stay cautious while opening mail with their own name or someone with the same domain name as sender, the so called "Self Sending mail".
By Christian Bjørklund

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