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Geek Culture / Got a strange email from "myself"

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Mr Kohlenstoff
18
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Joined: 7th Jun 2006
Location: Germany
Posted: 2nd Oct 2013 19:55
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Hey,

I just received an email that seemingly comes from the email address that received it - my personal one that I almost only give out to friends and family (which doesn't mean I get occasional spam mails there), even though I didn't send it.
I know it's not that difficult to fake the sender address of an email, and I've heard this "technique" is often used to distribute spam. However, this isn't spam - it's just a long text explaining the origins of the word "God", with a link to the respective wikipedia article. It's not even religious propaganda of any kind, just an almost scientific text, without any explanation of why it was sent to me.

So I wonder... who in the world would send me such a mail and why - and why send it "from my address"?
Since I was kind of worried I logged in into my mail account and made sure the last login before that wasn't today (August actually) just to be sure nobody actually found out my password.

However, I'm kind of puzzled right now. I guess it's just some random guy somewhere out there, having a bit of fun by sending nonsense to other people in order to confuse them.


So, can any of you guys help me out? Is there a way to find out who's the actual sender of the mail? Or should I just forget about it altogether?
Who knows, maybe it came from God himself who's messing around with atheists all over the world right now.

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Mobiius
Valued Member
22
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Joined: 27th Feb 2003
Location: The Cold North
Posted: 2nd Oct 2013 20:37
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Still spam, just delete it.

What spammers do is brute force email addresses and email them in the off chance that it's a valid address. They know if it worked if a specially coded image is access from their webserver, or you reply to it.


Now Visit My Website
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Indicium
16
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Joined: 26th May 2008
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2013 20:38
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Your email provider should make it fairly obvious if the email address is spoofed. For example it should say

From [email protected] via someothersite.com


They see me coding, they hating. http://indi-indicium.blogspot.co.uk/
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xplosys
19
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Joined: 5th Jan 2006
Playing: FPSC Multiplayer Games
Posted: 2nd Oct 2013 20:50
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I'm not saying that this is the case, but in some cases an infected computer will send emails to everyone in the users address book, including themselves. If others in your address book are also receiving emails from you, this would probably be a virus. Otherwise, it's more likely one of those "glitches in the matrix" that happen from time-to-time.

Brian.

I am the underground.
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Mr Kohlenstoff
18
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Joined: 7th Jun 2006
Location: Germany
Posted: 2nd Oct 2013 21:17
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Quote: "Your email provider should make it fairly obvious if the email address is spoofed."


All it displays is my actual email adress, no additional information whatsoever. And if I replied to it, it would send the answer to myself.

Quote: "I'm not saying that this is the case, but in some cases an infected computer will send emails to everyone in the users address book, including themselves."


Oh right, I've heard of those (and even received such an email from a friend of mine last year), but this doesn't seem to be the case. No one I know of got any mail from me - apart from myself, that is.

Quote: "What spammers do is brute force email addresses and email them in the off chance that it's a valid address. They know if it worked if a specially coded image is access from their webserver, or you reply to it."


That does sound like a reasonable explanation!
By the way my mother just told me that she received a similar email (with content from a different wikipedia article) a few weeks ago, also from herself.

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Ortu
DBPro Master
17
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Joined: 21st Nov 2007
Location: Austin, TX
Posted: 3rd Oct 2013 03:37
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it is obviously from you, from the future, and is clearly something that future you felt was vital that you should know.

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Wolf
17
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Joined: 8th Nov 2007
Location: Luxemburg
Posted: 3rd Oct 2013 04:00
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Quote: "it's just a long text explaining the origins of the word "God", with a link to the respective wikipedia article. It's not even religious propaganda of any kind, just an almost scientific text, without any explanation of why it was sent to me."


I'm wondering what could possibly be the goal of the person who went through all that trouble to get spread this. If it would be religious propaganda, I would understand...but this

http://www.serygalacaffeine.com
"absurdity has become necessity"
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RedFlames
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Joined: 25th Aug 2007
Location: Germania
Posted: 3rd Oct 2013 04:29 Edited at: 3rd Oct 2013 04:32
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Quote: "All it displays is my actual email adress, no additional information whatsoever. And if I replied to it, it would send the answer to myself."

Can you view the header of the mail somewhere? In most programs / webmail sites you can do that somewhere, might be hidden a little.

Something like:


Okay, most of that is just cryptic hashes and weird stuff, but the sender or senders mail-provider might be hidden somewhere. Or just send yourself an email (for realzies this time!) and compare the headers.
(Also, I edited most of the stuff above a little and removed my own address. Subject & Sender are real, as I just copied this from the Humble Bundle newsletter.
And if you use a different mail-provider than me (gmx.de) this might look a little different, I guess?)


The content sounds very random, most of the time spammers want to sell you some enlargements for a certain limb that most males happen to own.
Today I got two spam-mails that said something like "Heyy che hggck out thdgis phharmccggmacy onlixne! [Link which you should definitly not click]" ... or something like that anyways. Looked like they just threw in lots of random characters, I could barely even read it, but the spam filter still caught it. The second one was a reply to something (might've been the first one which seemed strange to me) but looked similar; I deleted both and they were sent by some fake "persons" anyways but definitely not by me. ^^

Did you change your password regardless or are you sure this was not sent from your account? I guess God always knows your password though.

PS: "Your message appears to contain bad language, please edit it out."
... oh. I wasn't aware that "[...]yDfU_KYB[...]" is a swear word if you remove the underscore.
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Kevin Picone
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 3rd Oct 2013 05:00
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Not all spammers are malicious, but it's still spam. Bin it and move on.


Mobile Platforms Are Coming
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