E-mail addresses can be hijacked, making it look like spam came from an innocent third party. Clever spammers can hide behind this defense by making it look like someone hijacked one of their e-mail addresses.
As I pointed out yesterday, e-mail headers can be forged, making it difficult to determine the origin of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE or spam). According to spamfaq.net (http://www.spamfaq.net/faqindex.shtml), a “Joe Job” is “the act of faking a spam so that it appears to be from an innocent third party.” The name comes from Joes.com, which was the first well-publicized victim of such an attack (http://www.joes.com/spammed.html).
Which brings me to yesterday’s note. The basic question is whether or not BoxedArt.com (owned by Big Resources, Inc.) is, in fact, the victim of a fake spam attack (a “Joe Job”) or whether they are the perpetrator of the attack. I tend to believe that they are the victim, but my attempts to contact them by phone have failed. After running into several dead-ends on the Internet, I contacted a local newspaper reporter in the city where the company is located. Stay tuned.
