Spoofing is the ability to easily alter an email so that it appears to be coming from anyone. Spammers use this technique to hide themselves and to to trick the recipients into opening the message. Typically the message does not contain any virus or trojan, but your basic Internet spam message.

Organizations and individuals can suffer from spoofing in many ways. You could be identified as a spam source even though none of these messages every came from one of your users. MIStupid receives many, many "bounced" emails send from such spammer/spoofers sending messages to inactive email accounts.

It is very common to receive spoofed emails that appear to come from other users in your domain, or even from yourself! When you start to recognize the names and email addresses from other domains, it is possible that you, or someone you know, has had their address book compromised by some virus or exploit.

Tracking down the source of the spoofer and rectifying the problem can be tedious and time consuming. The spoofing often comes in waves and may dwindle on its own without any attention. Regardless, make sure everyone you know has adequate anti-virus and other security software installed and up-to-date on their computers.

(see Computer Viruses)