The term “dictionary attack” usually refers to a method for finding a password by trying a limited (but still very large) set of passwords to see if any of them work. In the spam lexicon it means doing the same thing with email addresses.
Spammers generally don’t hand write spam messages (any that do are probably not very successful). They use computers. The software they use to generate bulk e-mailings can also vary parts of the message and the most basic variable in a spam campaign is the “To:” address.
Web browsers, or browsers for short, aren’t strictly an email related topic. However, the browser has become an important tool to most email users because of the proliferation of web-based (browser-based) email clients. Many email users have never used a stand-alone email client and have always processed their email using a browser-based client.
The best known browsers are:
You are almost certainly using at least one of these.
The answer to this question is: Not much really.
In email parlance, the “pretty name” is kind of a plain text hitchhiker that can (but is not required to) accompany an email address for display purposes. It allows email clients to display meaningful text for address fields (From, To, Cc, Bcc) instead of just an address.
So, instead of seeing something like this:
somecrypticaddress@somedomain.com
If your email software suddenly starts downloading duplicate copies of the same emails, there are four common causes to consider.
1. Your email software has more than one “Account” or “Profile” or “Personality” configured to download messages from the same email POP account. As a result, your software downloads one copy for each Account/Profile/Personality.
One of our staff recently received (on an unfiltered account) a forward of one of the many silly hoaxes that circulate periodically (“Pleeeease Reeead it was on Good Morning America”).
As he scrolled through the message, curious to find out exactly which silly hoax it was he became increasingly horrified at what he was seeing.
The message had been forwarded many times before reaching the person that forwarded it to him and each of the forwarders had openly published what appeared to be their entire address list.
This brings up two issues (only one of which will be addressed here): more »
The short answer is yes. Anyone can forge the sender (From) field of an email and have it claim to be coming from pretty much any address they want.
At first glance you might think “That’s horrible, why do we allow that to happen?” The truth is that it’s rather common, and you might even do this yourself, though for entirely innocent reasons.
By default, email client software programs will delete all messages from your mail server right after downloading them. This means that when you click “Get New Messages” or “Check Mail” (or whatever you do to see if you have any new messages) your email client connects to the server where your mailbox account resides and copies all of the messages from the server to your computer. When it finishes, it removes the messages from the server so that the only copies of the messages are the ones downloaded to your computer (or phone or PDA if that’s what you used to check mail).
Sooner or later, anyone using email is going to run across the term “email client”. The context of this encounter is usually a tech support conversation in which the support rep asks “Which email client are you using?” If you don’t know how to answer this question don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Understanding the basics of how email works can make life a lot easier for any email user. Especially those who are interested in using email effectively. In this post we’ll cover the basics that every user should know.
