{"id":51208,"date":"2026-01-19T17:55:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=51208"},"modified":"2026-01-19T18:00:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:00:27","slug":"email-how-did-the-email-server-know-the-phishing-attempt-was-spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/email-how-did-the-email-server-know-the-phishing-attempt-was-spam\/","title":{"rendered":"Email: how did the email server know the phishing attempt was spam?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Self-tutoring about email security: the tutor mentions one way an email application knew to classify a phishing attempt as Junk.<\/h2>\n<p>\nThe following is according to my understanding.<\/p>\n<p>\nI mention in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/cybercrime-email-more-spoofing-and-phishing\/\">my post from January 16, 2026,<\/a> a rather unsettling phishing attempt that reached an email account I use. It (falsely) claimed to be from Canada Post; from the images it would have loaded had I viewed it, one might imagine it would have looked pretty convincing.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe email server, however, knew the email wasn&#8217;t authentic. How? Looking in the headers, it seems the email arrived via a chain of several servers. The first one&#8217;s ip address is listed, then another, then another.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe email claims to be from Canada Post, though via a different domain; interestingly, that domain is also authentic. However, it seems the email didn&#8217;t come from that one, either. (For background, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/email-message-from-a-spoofer\/\">my post from January 6, 2026, about spoofing.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>\nThe email server looked at the originating domain, and at the originating ip address, and can determine that said originating domain doesn&#8217;t permit sending emails from said originating ip address. It seems that is enough to convince the server &#8211; rightly so &#8211; that the email is spam.<\/p>\n<p>\nSource:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/askleo.com\/email-headers\/\">askleo.com<\/a><\/p>\nJack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-tutoring about email security: the tutor mentions one way an email application knew to classify a phishing attempt as Junk. The following is according to my understanding. I mention in my post from January 16, 2026, a rather unsettling phishing &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/email-how-did-the-email-server-know-the-phishing-attempt-was-spam\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Email: how did the email server know the phishing attempt was spam?<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3042,3043],"tags":[3381,3947,3966,3965,3961],"class_list":["post-51208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-security","category-email","tag-domain","tag-email-headers","tag-email-server","tag-spam","tag-spoofing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51208"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51214,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51208\/revisions\/51214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}