What is spoofing?
Spoofing is something pretending to be something it is not, on the Internet, usually an e-mail or Web site. Typically, it is a technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder hijacks a target’s root Internet address (known as an Internet Provider or IP address) to make it appear fraudulent e-mails are from a trusted source. To engage in IP spoofing, a hacker must first use a variety of techniques to find an IP address of a trusted host and then modify its identifying information on the Internet. Once criminals have your customer’s password, they can use your bank’s online banking site to withdraw or transfer funds. Spoofers can be anyone. They can be ordinary criminals out to steal money, competitors trying to cripple your business, disgruntled employees or irate customers. Attacks can be personally motivated or simply random. Spoofing of a bank Web site is nothing more than just another attempt to rob that bank.
Spammers use e-mail spoofing to trick you into believing the e-mail you’re receiving from them came from someone else, usually a trusted source. For example, it could appear to be from the system administrator of your Internet Service Provider or a local authority. The e-mail requests that you provide personal, private or financial information.
“Spoofing” is when a user tries to subscribe to a list using someone else’s or a bogus e-mail address. If the “spoof” is successful, the list owner will receive error messages about the bogus address from each posting that is made to the list (until the owner deletes the bogus address). Most of the time, a spoofer feels they can’t be caught, however, e-mail audit trails are easily followed. A list can be “spoof-proofed” (or at least made “spoof-resistant”) by using the “Confirm” option on the Subscription keyword, using owner-only subscriptions (or closed subscriptions), or limiting the service area of the list. Like “spamming”, “spoofing” can cost a user their computing privileges and is legally actionable in some areas.
When data is not transmitting over the connection for a period of time, the connection “spoofs.” When a connection spoofs, the phone connection is dropped and a placeholder is reserved in the server. Once the user sends data (e.g. click on a hyperlink or send an email), the phone automatically dials back into the system and the connection is reestablished almost immediately. This feature reduces airtime and improves the phone´s battery life.
In order to get spam mail to pass through all of the different filters and programs on the Internet, a spammer uses techniques called spoofing. This is the act of changing information within an email that causes the email to take on different appearances. This is done in order to get the mail past the filters that are set to protect your email address. For example: A spammer doesn’t want you to hit reply to an email because if you do, you are causing them problems. For one the spammer would get a lot of mail each day sent back to their system, more than the spammers system could manage. They can’t very well stop you from hitting reply, but they can make the address the email came from, contain something that doesn’t exist. Then if you hit reply, your reply will not go anywhere and will end up bouncing back to you. Another trick a spammer uses is to spoof the email server name and even the domain name the email originates from. This is done for a number of reasons, which range from tryi
