IT Security Stack Exchange
IT Security Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [email]

Related to email protocols, clients, servers, content, and message format.

1720 questions
229
votes
15 answers

Tracing the location of a mobile IP from an email

I'm a TV scriptwriter - and not hugely tech-savvy, so please bear with me... If the police have an email, sent by a suspect over a 3G or 4G network, could they use the IP address (since they know when it was sent) to find out - from the service…
kjh03
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198
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3 answers

Don't understand how my mum's Gmail account was hacked

My mum (on Gmail, using Chrome) received an email from a friend's Hotmail address. She opened the email (very obviously a phishing email) and clicked a link in it. This opened a webpage with loads of medical ads on. She closed the page and deleted…
cja
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151
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8 answers

How can PayPal spoof emails so easily to say it comes from someone else?

When I receive a payment in PayPal, it sends me an email about it (pictured below). The problem is that the email is shown to be coming from the money sender's email address and not from PayPal itself, even though the real sender is PayPal. Here is…
Sunny88
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128
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4 answers

What are the security reasons for disallowing the plus sign in email addresses?

My question is based on this tweet after I commented about forbidding + symbols in email addresses. The tweet says, "This is a measure we've taken for security reasons." This can be frustrating and inconvenient for people that have (or use) plus…
Matt
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124
votes
5 answers

Why do phishing e-mails use faked e-mail addresses instead of the real one?

I read that you can write anything into the From: field of an e-mail. If that is true, then why are phishing e-mails trying to trick me with look-a-like addresses like service@amaz0n.com instead of just using the actual service@amazon.com itself?
JFB
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115
votes
9 answers

Why is it dangerous to open a suspicious email?

I would like to know why is it considered to be dangerous to open an email from an unknown source? I am using Gmail and I thought it's only unsafe to download an attachment and run it. The first thing that came into my mind was what if the email…
Tomas
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114
votes
7 answers

Someone is using my (or has the same) email

I just got a letter from court saying I made 49 threats to someone I had a problem with three years ago. This person presents "my emails" as evidence. I went through all my emails, and I haven't found a single one. The mail presented as evidence all…
Leah G
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113
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4 answers

Is using 'dot' and 'at' in email addresses in public text still useful?

When entering your email address publicly, a practice is to replace . with text dot and @ with text at. I assume that the reasoning is that this way automatic email-collector robots won't match your address so easily. I still see updated websites…
n611x007
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106
votes
5 answers

Is sending password to user email secure?

How secure is sending passwords through email to a user, since email isn't secured by HTTPS. What is the best way to secure it? Should i use encryption?
user310291
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102
votes
10 answers

Unsubscribe safely

I have heard that is better to never click to any link in an email. Is it a bad idea to click to a unsubscribe link? What is the best way to unsubscribe to undesired mails?
Nrc
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102
votes
8 answers

Can someone read my E-Mail if I lose ownership of my domain?

Let's assume I have a server set up with an email address like me@mydomain.tld. Now I have distributed my business card with the e-mail address to all people all over the world and they keep sending me confidential emails. But now I don't feel like…
Skiddie Hunter
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96
votes
6 answers

Why would someone open a Netflix account using my Gmail address?

This is something that happened to me a few months ago. I don't know if it is a hack attempt, although I can't think of any way that there could be any danger or any personal information gained. I don't have a Netflix account and never have done. …
user2760608
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89
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1 answer

Isn't the BBC being extremely irresponsible in describing how to authenticate an account-related email?

On this webpage, the BBC says: I’ve received a ‘Changes to your BBC account’ email claiming to be from the BBC – is this a genuine email? At the end of September 2016, we upgraded our ‘BBC iD’ sign-in system to ‘BBC Account’, and as a result we had…
Lightness Races in Orbit
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82
votes
5 answers

Email Account under attack (really) - anything I can do?

Over the last week, there is a constant barrage of authentication failures to my email account from a variety of ip addresses - usually in blocks of exactly 575 attempts. My password is as strong as a password can be so the chance of brute force…
clemdia
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79
votes
6 answers

How does PGP differ from S/MIME?

Is S/MIME an abstracted system for general MIME type encryption, whereas PGP is more for email? Why would I want to choose one over the other, or can I use both at the same time?
Tyler Gillies
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