Spam is the term used for unwanted and unsolicited bulk emails - it is the email equivalent of junk mail.

Examples of spam email:

• Emails which advertise products or services.
• Emails requesting money donations and money laundering services.
• Chain letters/emails offering thousands of pounds/dollars for sending a small amount of money to each name on a list.

Spammers will utilise dedicated software to send unsolicited email. This software will be supplied with large databases of existing email addresses or files of names and words found in dictionaries, which are then combined to create email addresses and tested anonymously.

Spoofed emails are those which appear to be from one email address, but are actually sent by another.

Examples of emails which are most likely to be spoofed:

• Emails purporting to be from reputable institutions e.g. banks/building Societies, eBay etc. asking for your personal or confidential details or PIN codes.
• Emails asking for passwords or advising you to change to a given password.
• Illegal/offensive advertising (the email address is spoofed, so you cannot track down the offender).

In addition, many spoofed emails are generated by email distributed viruses.

Many users have reported that they are receiving automated emails claiming that an email they have sent has been blocked before reaching the intended recipient because it was infected or contained a virus.

These notices do not necessarily mean that your computers have a virus.

Many of the current email-borne viruses spoof the address in the 'From' field in the emails they send to make it appear that the email has originated from somewhere other than its real source. There are many methods of generating the spoof email address, one of the most common is to harvest addresses from the Windows address book on an infected computer.

Anti-virus programs protecting the recipients mail box detect that an email message is infected, and send a warning message back to the originator to warn them that they have an infected computer. However, the originator has no knowledge of ever having sent the email. The most likely reason for this is that the infected computer belongs to someone who has your email address saved in their Windows address book, but there is no way of establishing who that may be or taking any action to stop it. 

If you are regularly checking for virus infection on your computers, there is no need to take any action. You probably do not have a virus on your computers, but someone you know might do.

Best Practice

• Never open email attachments unless you are sure they are genuine and from a trusted source.
• Ensure your anti-virus software is running and has up-to-date virus definitions.