Email: message from a spoofer

Self-tutoring about email awareness and security: the tutor mentions a curiosity.

The following is according to my understanding.

I was checking one of my email accounts today and noticed an email claiming to be from that same address. I knew, however, that I hadn’t sent it. Naturally, I wondered about the situation, so decided to look into it.

I found the email in the Junk folder; the email client already knew it was a scam. Moreover, as pointed out in the Microsoft source mentioned below, it didn’t appear in the Sent folder.

I took a look at the headers sent along with the email; the Return-Path is empty. To my knowledge, that suggests the sender doesn’t care to be notified if the email fails to be delivered. The idea I get is that an empty Return-Path is sus.

Looking at the headers, one can see, in the Received header, where the email is really from. There are one or two sus things about that, too, which I might research a little more before writing about in future posts.

Bottom line: scammers can send emails appearing to be from other email addresses.

Source:

learn.microsoft.com

twilio.com