[vox-tech] Alarming spam

[Shwaine]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007, Richard Harke wrote:

>      I find this rather alarming as I doubt if the sender is a friend.
> I also don't know where they got the info as I never post such info
> in public forums. I'm wondering if my ISP could have suffered a
> breakin as that seems the most likely to tie together all the elements.
>

Do you have a listed phone number? Own a home? You already said you've got 
a wife, so that means you have a marriage certificate. There's all sorts 
of info like your address and wife's name available in the good old public 
records. Doesn't cost the spammers much to do a public records query 
(phone records are freely available online and public record searches 
usually have only nominal fees). The dividends they reap by getting your 
attention far outweighs the costs in most cases.

As for tracking where the email actually came from, the body is worthless. 
Look at the envelope/headers (different terms for the same thing depending 
on which email program you use). That will show you the path the email 
took (which email servers it went through) to get to you. Won't nail down 
the sender, but will at least give you a better starting point that the 
body. Unless the originator is an open relay, then it's rather pointless 
too.