Spam email coming from name of person I know, but with wrong email address

3

I recently received a spam email as follows:

From: Friend's name <dglee222@knu.ac.kr>

Subject: Fwd: healthy belly fat loss without starvation

To: Me <myemail@optonline.net>`

it's just my advice to you 
[LINK REDACTED]
this amazing weight loss product worked for me and i'm sure it can work for you!

take care, Person I know

This is pretty worrying. The person who purportedly "sent this" has been deceased for a while now. The email address it was sent from was dglee222@knu.ac.kr@37.53.219.92 in Ukraine. This was on my optimum (cable provider) email account, and I'll be honest, my password is not particularly secure. I don't use the contacts function of my optimum account, but I have had a few conversations by email with the person that the spammer is trying to spoof.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Liam stobert

Posted 2015-10-26T02:11:18.627

Reputation: 33

So you're confident that your deceased friend has not been reincarnated and is living in Ukraine? It sounds like their address book may have been hacked at some point and the information sold to spammers. I would just block their name (from any email address; route it to the junk or trash folder, don't reply with any type of notice). – fixer1234 – 2015-10-26T02:47:50.880

@fixer1234 I wouldn’t even go as far as saying an address book was hacked since we live in an age of conspicuous social media. The reality is 100% anyone in the world can send any email with the “name” being anything from “Luke Skywalker” to “Heywood Jablowme.” The way these SPAM mails work is they often harvest friend data from social media sites—as well as address books—and then connect the dots. So in this case perhaps there was a social media connection and the SPAM bot just sent out messages connected to the original poster’s email but with those names. – JakeGould – 2015-10-26T03:03:44.233

2If you know your password isn't secure, make it secure, don't sit here and say it isn't secure. – Ramhound – 2015-10-26T10:58:59.720

Answers

3

There's really nothing you can do about this, but nor is there anything to worry about (presuming you don't follow the link).

Spammers want their spam to rise above the sea of bad emails that you receive, so that you'll trust them and click on the links. To do that, they want their email to appear to come from someone you know. Apparently, at some point this person's contact database was hacked and sold, and now the spammers send email to the person's contacts bearing the person's name (it's becoming harder to spoof the actual email address, but the right name is more effective than nothing).

So, you're likely to continue getting the occasional email from your deceased acquaintance. It's probably not related to the poor password on your Optimum email account, but you probably should change it to something more secure anyway.

Daniel Griscom

Posted 2015-10-26T02:11:18.627

Reputation: 527

Asked: 2015-10-26T02:11:18.627

Viewed: 19 209 times

Active: 2018-10-25T18:48:02.507