I've often received emails from friends, telling to to click such-and-such a link. The link usually ends with the extension *.php. Being a suspicious sort, I never click such links - but I'm sure that a lot of people do. I'm quite sure that these emails are fraudulent, and didn't really come from my friends. Usually, they come from friends that have email accounts with the most common carriers, hotmail, yahoo, or comcast - but not always.

There are times when a friend's email account is hijacked, and a Spammer has logged onto the friend's account and taken it over. If this is the case, my friend is in real trouble. He/she can try to log in and change the password - but if he/she can log in, then probably the account isn't hijacked. If it IS hijacked, most carriers have a way for users to contact the carried and verify identity through alternate methods to get the account back.

What happens usually is that my friend's account has been spoofed - somebody has used my friend's email address in place of the actual address that is sending the email. If my friend can access his/her email normally, then it's only spoofing that has taken place, not a complete hijacking. There's not much I can do if somebody has spoofed my address, but the experts say that Spammers don't use spoofed addresses very long, so the problem will most likely go away on its own in a few days.

This article makes a lot of sense. Take a look.

-Joe-