Email Spoofing/Forgery

What is spoofing/forgery?

Spammers often alter the 'From' and 'Reply-to' lines of the messages they send, in order to disguise their identities, deflect complaints about their messages, and to generally confuse recipients. The vast majority of unsolicited mail that appears to involve NetZero accounts does not actually originate from the NetZero domain. Rather, the NetZero accounts listed in most spam are either nonexistent, forged into the message headers, and/or being used solely as 'drop boxes' to receive responses.

It is NetZero's policy to terminate valid NetZero accounts implicated in unsolicited messages if found guilty.

How to identify a spoofed email?

Click here for more info.

Why am I getting mail that wasn't addressed to me?

It is possible to receive a message that appears to not have been addressed to you. When you receive this kind of message, this means that you were sent a blind carbon copy (Bcc) message. A Bcc message is a copy of the message that is sent to one or more recipients where the recipients' names are not visible (therefore, the term 'blind') to each other or other recipients of the message.

Often, spammers use 'blind carbon copy' addressing to hide extremely long recipient lists and to confuse recipients. Because many people use Bcc messaging in acceptable ways on a daily basis, we cannot take action against email messages coming into our domain because of Bcc addressing. NetZero does not condone any sort of Internet abuse, however, and we are happy to help our members stop offensive email.

If you receive a spam message that appears to have originated from NetZero, please forward the message with its full headers, to abuse@support.netzero.com.

If you receive a spam message from a non-NetZero email address, forward the message with its full headers to the postmaster at the sender's domain. For example, if the message came from 'sendername@domainname.com', forward the message to <postmaster@domainname.com>. To help us fight spam better, please send us a copy of the spam. To learn about how to report spam to NetZero, click here.

If the spam originated at NetZero, we will take immediate action, or forward complaints along to the appropriate authorities at other domains so that action will be taken against the offending accounts.

For example, if the message came from 'sendername@domainname.com,' forward the message to postmaster@domainname.com. To learn how to read message headers and how to report spam, please visit the How to Complain to the Spammer's Provider Web site at http://spam.abuse.net/userhelp/howtocomplain.shtml

If the spam originated at NetZero, we will take immediate action, or forward complaints along to the appropriate authorities at other domains so that action will be taken against the offending accounts.

Why am I getting mail delivery notifications for email that I didn't send?

If you have received Mail Delivery Failure notices to your NetZero account for messages you have not sent, it is possible that the original spam message has your NetZero account name forged in the 'From' field and/or the 'Return-Path' fields.

Please note that spammers often forge innocent domain names (in this case NetZero) into the message headers in order to disguise the actual origin while creating confusion for Spam recipients.

Please forward the entire Mail failure notice (also include the original message that caused it) along with its full headers to abuse@support.netzero.com so we may investigate the matter further.

What should I do if somebody forges my email address?

Spammers often pick up random email ids while forging. In the event that your id gets forged, you might receive a warning from the recipient/the recipient's ISP. Please reply back to them and clarify the situation. All ISPs do understand how innocent email ids do get spoofed.

How do I report a forged email?

If you have any doubt whether an email is really legitimate, please report it to us at abuse@support.netzero.com along with its full headers. Please do not alter the subject line or forward the message as an attachment. These would prevent us from investigating the matter further.

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