Knowing how to check the source, as in the raw "code," of an email is important because there will be times when you need to do it. Why? To check authenticity of an email. Spam and phishing emails are getting more tricky to identify all the time, and your best weapon against this is knowing how to check the source of an email.

Unfortunately it is the case where the process of getting the source of an email is distinctively different per provider or mail client, so here’s a quick cheat sheet on how to do it:

Hotmail

1. Right-click the email you want to view the source of.

2. Left-click View Message Source.

Example:

Important note: This can only be done when your emails are shown as a list. If you double-click to open an email whereas the message list is not seen, there isn’t a way to view the message source from there. You must right-click specifically on the email in list view (regardless of whether the reading pane is on or off.)

Yahoo! Mail

There are two ways in Y! Mail to view the source.

1. While in list view, right click the email you want to view the source of.

2. Left click View full headers. It will be last in the list.

Example:

or..

Whether reading a message or having it highlighted in list view, click the Actions button then Full Header.

Example:

Yahoo! Mail Classic

1. Open the email you want to view the source of.

2. Scroll all the way to the bottom and look for the tiny text on the extreme right that says Full Headers and click it.

Example:

Gmail

1. Open the email you want to view the source of.

2. Click the small down arrow on the right to drop down a menu.

3. Select Show original.

Example:

Windows Live Mail or Microsoft Outlook Express 6

The super-annoying long way

(This is not the way you want to do it because it takes too many steps. See super-easy way below this.)

1. Right-click the email you want to view the source of.

2. Select Properties, like this:

3. From the window that opens up, select the Details tab, like this:

4. In that same window, click the Message Source button, like this:

The super-easy way

1. Highlight or open the email you want to view the source of.

2. Press CTRL+F3

The F3 method is a completely undocumented feature, both in OE 6 and WL Mail. But trust me, it’s there. Try it for yourself.

Mozilla Thunderbird

1. Highlight any email in the message list or open an email.

2. Click View then Message Source.

Example:

or..

1. Highlight any email in the message list or open an email.

2. Press CTRL+U

Incidentally, this is the exact same keystroke used to view web page HTML source in the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

What headers should you check in the source?

Okay, so you know how to view the source of an email, but what do you look for?

The easiest thing to check is the Received: header. This will tell you up front where the email came from originally. The part that’s most important is the very end of the line where the dot-com/net/org is.

Example:

This email came from google.com (it was a Gmail address,) so I know this email is safe. What’s before the google.com doesn’t matter much as it’s the tail that counts. Spam and phishing attempts will attempt to fool you into thinking the mail was delivered from a trusted domain by inserting said domain in the middle. For example, a spam/phish would show as google.com.some.bad.site.ru or something similar. The google.com is in there, but not at the tail. That’s bad and it’s a spam/phish attempt.

Keep an eye on the tail side of a Received: header and you’ll easily be able to identify true trusted domains from spam and phishing attempts.

I use Skype quite a bit. I use it as my work at home phone to call and receive calls using a standard phone number and I use it to let my parents see their grandbaby. So I recently upgraded to the latest release of version 4 and was almost immediately bombarded with “add me to your contact list” spam.

This is especially annoying because the contacts are added to my list (even though I have not approved them) and the options I have set in Skype to only allow people in my list to contact me have no effect at all. This seems to be a very common problem/complaint among Skype users. While there is no solution for this yet, there is a workaround you can do to help curb the problem.

My solution was to uninstall version 4 and go back to the latest release of 3.8. Since doing this,I no longer have this problem.

Regardless of how careful you are with your email address, you will eventually get spammed. Have you ever wondered how your address gets on spam lists, then this article titled ‘Catching Spammers in the Act‘ is worth a read.

Basically the findings were consistent with what you would expect. If your email address is posted on a popular site (or any site), you will most likely get spammed (eventually). If you are going to post your email, one thing to keep in mind:

using simple obfuscation techniques–for example, using “-at-” to replace the “@” symbol in an e-mail address. The researchers found that these methods frustrate current spam techniques surprisingly well.

Additionally, they found that submitting your email to a reputable site most like will not result in spam, so your “jun email account” may not be needed after all.

Again, nothing shocking here, just a reminder that you do want to be careful where you post your email.

A very, very old email tip to prevent nasty code executions from spam on email clients was to simply disable the preview pane altogether. But you have to remember back then that email clients were decidedly "dumb". Today they’re much smarter. For example, you can disable/enable the preview pane at whim in Mozilla Thunderbird just by pressing F8. In addition, just about every client has the ability to force-read all mail in plain text; this thwarts almost all spam from triggering web bugs letting the spammer know you opened the mail.

Webmail on the other hand is a different story. Your browser is not an email client by design.

As most people know, spam routinely has embedded images in them and as a webmail user you have no option to force-read webmail in plain text. So on the instances where spam accidentally gets in your inbox with embedded images, spammers are crafty enough where the images will display anyway, send the web bug, and as a result you get more spam.

Fortunately for you, the subject line of spam emails usually make it very obvious what they are. For the times spam lands in your inbox, you can bypass opening it altogether and delete without opening it.

Here’s how it’s done using Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail:

Hotmail

Change the reading pane setting to Off. This is on the right side of the screen when logged in and looks like this:

When you see a spam land in the inbox, put a check in the box, then click the Delete or Junk link.

Yahoo Mail

In the "new" mode, click View then Reading Pane OR just press v on your keyboard.

When you see a spam, right-click the mail and delete or check the box for the spam and click the Delete or Spam button.

In Yahoo Mail "classic" mode there isn’t any reading/preview pane of any kind. On mails you see as spam in the inbox, check the box and delete or mark as spam.

Gmail

This mail system by default shows all mail as threaded conversations. To see a mail you must click thru. If you see a spam, check the box for that conversation, then click the Report spam button.

A universal truth about the internet is that if there’s anything, and I mean anything, that gains popularity as a communications medium, it will be spammed mercilessly.

Such is the case with Twitter. Currently it’s being bombarded with spam. And it’s set to get worse.

I have to admit that I’ve been drawing away from the service for that very reason. Originally I would post a few messages to the service daily. But then I kept getting "followers" there were nothing but spam and it’s outright irritating.

It’s so irritating in fact that I don’t even recommend it now. I used to say, "Hey, try this out. It’s better than Facebook and easier to use once you get a client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck." But I don’t do that anymore. Not unless you set your account to "protected". But there’s no fun in that because you’re supposed to use it as a social medium, i.e. it’s meant to be public.

Hate to say it, but the guys and girls in the PCMech Forums were right. Twitter is useless. Being the spam farm that it is now and has been proven so, that confirms it.

Do I have to say it?

Spam.

Or at least that’s what Symantec says, so you can take that for what it’s worth.

Spam is one of those things that’s constantly changing to bust the roadblocks we put up against it. However we as email users are smarter now and we also have better tools to fight the junk.

What’s the best way to filter spam out?

This depends on how you get to your email.

With web-based mail, staying in the browser is the best way to filter the junk out. This mail environment is designed in such as way where the interface is in that "Let me do that for you" mode of operation. And yes, letting the environment take care of the spam on your behalf is the best option.

Using a client on the other hand requires more manual involvement. This is how I use email and I personally like it better. For example, in my setup I have SpamAssassin running on server-side. But I also have the built-in junk filter running on client-side with Mozilla Thunderbird. This combination of local and server is very effective. SA gets rid of most of it while the local filter catches whatever SA doesn’t (and not much gets through). Thunderbird also "trusts" SA which makes it work even better.

With a local client there are many ways to use junk filtration.

Here’s a few:

Mailwasher

There are free and pro versions of this. Works with Incredimail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Gmail, AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. It’s got all the bases covered.

OnlyMyEmail

This service does not require any software as its handled directly from the web site. Not free. It’s won several awards for its performance.

Cloudmark

Some of you may remember Cloudmark from the past. They’re still around and still doing a great job. Not free, but with a free 15-day trial.

POPFile

Free. Some say this is better than most paid email spam-blocker products. I can honestly say this is the "geekiest" of the bunch as it has a very powerful interface where you can control every single thing that happens. This is, said honestly, a spam filter on steroids. But for some, that might be exactly what you’re looking for. I strongly suggest reading the Quick Start Guide if you want to try it out.

Pretty much all email clients have some sort of new mail notification. Be it a sound, pop-up, tray icon or whatever, the purpose of it is to grab your attention. While this is certainly convenient, it also can be quite distracting… especially if you have a lot of spam getting through.

Before we swapped our email to run through Postini, I would get roughly 50 spam messages a day. While Outlook’s built in filters and SpamBayes would filter 95% of it, the new email would still trigger the notification. If you figure each distraction costs about 30 seconds to get your initial train of thought back, this is approximately a 30 minute time waster each day which prompted me to disable the notification.

Keep in mind, your new email notification’s usefulness is directly proportional to the effectiveness of your spam filter. Since Postini has virtually eliminated our spam, my new mail notifications are now working exactly as they were intended.

If you have your own domain email account (i.e. me@mydomain.com, me@mycompany.com) and are continually getting pummeled with spam despite your best efforts, a service you really need to look at is Postini.

Postini is a Google owned service which provides hosted spam protection for ridiculously low pricing (at the time of this writing $12 per email per year). Considering how spam can easily waste 30 minutes to an hour of your time a day, this is a no-brainer. We recently moved our organization’s mail to run through Postini and within a week, my users were already talking about how much time this is saving them.

You can read the full details here, but basically all you have to do is point your DNS mail records to Postini’s servers and the service will filter your mail and deliver only the legit messages. At the end of the day, you will then get a ‘quarantine’ message which asks you what to do with the questionable emails.

Overall, after using this system for a bit, I have nothing but great things to say about it. This is definitely a must have for any organization where spam is a constant complaint.

Everyone hates unsolicited phone calls. Simply put, they are to the telephone as spam is to email. With upfront appologies to any readers who may be telemarketers, they are extremely annoying and a complete waste of time and besides that, who actually buys anything from an unsolicited call?

To combat the never ending barage of calls, we now have the National Do Not Call Registry (in the US at least). You probably already know about it, you submit your number it is off limits to telemarketers who are required by law to honor your request. The only thing is registration is not permanent, you have to re-register your number every year.

So this tip is just a reminder to resubscribe your number in the event your registration is expired. After all, you don’t want to start getting any more calls do you?

The LA Times reported that because of a small server company in California (McColo) that has been shut off, the amount of spam worldwide has dropped two-thirds.

Yes, it’s incredible to think that around 66% of spam you most likely see in your inbox or Spam/Junk folder came from there.

Symantec stated however that spam will jump right back up to its previous level by around Christmas December 25; the relief is only temporary as spammers scurry to find new hosting companies to start the spam engine up again.

An interesting note about this is that spam was dealt a serious blow not by anti-spam software, lawsuits against spammers or the like, but rather by taking the approach going after larger U.S. companies (i.e. U.S. host providers) that "unknowingly" assist spammers. I put "unknowingly" in quotes, because let’s be real here.. it’s all about the cash. If a hosting company is thrown big bucks for serious hosting packages as long as they pay a blind eye to what’s going on, they’ll pocket it and not care.

This should serve as a huge wake-up call to the anti-spam industry that anti-spam software and lawsuits don’t work – but human involvement in going after spam-friendly hosting companies does.

[Source: LA Times]

Spam control is a necessity if you use e-mail which the vast majority of us do. And although PCMech has covered spam control with several articles on the subject, the methods change from year to year – so consider this an update for the 2008-2009 era of e-mail.

Client Side

With e-mail clients you have free and paid options but I concentrate on the freebies because I don’t consider spam protection worth the cost unless it’s in a corporate environment with hundreds and/or thousands of users.

The best freebie spam protection I’ve used client-side is the adaptive junk mail filter in Mozilla Thunderbird. Adaptive translates to "learns as it goes". When you first enable the filter Thunderbird will still deliver spam to the inbox until you flag it. The more you flag, the more the filter "learns" what is spam and what isn’t and filters appropriately over time. When used in concert with its built in address book (for whitelisting – more on that in a moment) it does the job well.

For those that would ask "How long does the ‘learning’ process take?", it’s all dependent on how much spam you get. The more you get, the longer the process takes. But even if you receive a ton of spam to the tune of 200 per day (which is extreme), the adaptive filter will be able to learn most of that in a few weeks.

Server Side (Domains)

If you have your own domain and pay for web hosting, you most likely use domain-based e-mail, such as you@your.domain. There are server-side options you can set in your web host’s control panel to slow the spam down.

SpamAssassin

Most web hosts (even the cheap ones) have SpamAssassin – which is an awesome spam filter. Lots of options, lots of control. Under most circumstances you should be able to instruct SA to modify the subject line or e-mails it thinks are spam. For example, if a spam is received and the subject line is "hello", SA will change it to "*****SPAM***** hello" before delivery to your inbox so it’s really easy to spot upon receive.

In addition, if you use the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client it has options to "trust" SpamAssassin based on e-mail headers.

SPF

Sender Policy Framework is an absolute necessity when using domain-based e-mail. This is not a filter per sé but rather a "challenge response" to stop spoofed e-mails.

If you run into the situation where all of a sudden you see tons of "Message could not be delivered" for mails you never sent, all with spam-ish looking subject lines, your domain mail is being spoofed. SPF will take care of this 99% of the time. Once enabled it takes a few weeks and then the spoofs will stop.

Whitelisting / Blacklisting

You can whitelists (addresses you want to receive mail from) and blacklists (addresses you want to block) on a server side level but there is some debate as to how effective it is compared to having a client do it.

If you’re the kind that uses a web-based version of your domain-based e-mail, utilizing server side lists of this type would serve to your advantage. If using a client, let the client do it.

Web-Based Free E-Mail

Example of freebie web-based mail services are Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AIM mail, Gmail and so on.

Freebie web-based e-mail compared to clients and/or server side differs because your options are much fewer as to what you can do. However there are things you can do now to take control of the spam.

Always use your Contact List / Address Book

With most freebie web-based mail, anyone listed in your Contact List is automatically whitelisted. So for friends, family, biz contacts and other types of mail you want, use that list and use it often.

It is better to have direct delivery instead of forwarded mail

Mail which is forwarded to you from another e-mail account runs the risk of bypassing the spam filters (even on Gmail) because it is in fact a forwarded mail addressed to you.

You’re better off not having anything forwarded, trust the spam filters provided by the freebie service and let the filters do their job. The more mail you have forwarded in, the more likely you are to have spam directly in your inbox – no matter how many times you flag it otherwise.

Stay inside the web interface

Spam filters work better on freebie web-based mail when using it in its intended environment – the web browser.

Example using Gmail:

Instead of using the Gmail interface you decide to access the mail using a mail client instead such as Mozilla Thunderbird. When spam comes in you flag the spam in Thunderbird, but it’s not using the Gmail reporting method but rather the internal client method. Gmail is never notified of the spam you reported so it will continue to arrive in your inbox. If you stay within the Gmail interface and flag spam there, Gmail "learns" what is spam and what isn’t – which is what you want to stop it from appearing.

For other e-mail services where you download mail via POP, the same applies. Flagging spam in a client never notifies the e-mail service you flagged it, decreasing spam prevention.

Not using your true e-mail address

The reason web sites like BugMeNot exist is because people get sick and tired of signing up for stuff only to find it nearly impossible to "de-sign" your e-mail address later.

You do have a few options here, all of which work well.

Using an alternative "don’t bug me" e-mail provider

The best example of this is Mailinator. You can fabricate e-mail addresses out of thin air in seconds. However there’s one serious drawback – you always have to go to that site to get the mail delivered there (very inconvenient).

Linked accounts

This is by far the absolute best way to have a "throw away" e-mail address you can easily access while still using your primary account.

The service that does this best is Hotmail because it’s stupidly easy.

If you use an @live.com, @msn.com or @hotmail.com account, login to it, then go to Options and click "View and edit your personal information" under "Manage your account". On the next screen there are options for "Linked Windows Live IDs". From here you can link other Hotmail, Live and/or MSN accounts to your primary account. If you want to add one, go ahead. If you want to add more than that (I have 5), go ahead.

When you’re done, in your normal Hotmail interface at the far right you will see your e-mail address. This can be clicked and you can switch over to your other account instantly.

The beauty of this setup is that your e-mail addresses stay separate. They are linked but do not share inboxes. So whenever you want to check the other account, all it takes is two clicks.

This is free to do, by the way.

To note: AIM mail and Yahoo! also have linked account options.

Gmail does have the ability to poll mail from other accounts but has no linking ability (as in link 2 Gmail accounts together in concert).

What did I miss?

Do you have any spam prevention tips I missed? If so, please feel free to tell everybody in the comments. Any spam prevention is good spam prevention.

What you see here’s not a test; I’m a’warning you – beware!

If you reply to spam and don’t give a damn; you’ll get stung, and they don’t care.

They sent out spam; damn, to the people on the Internet; jammin’ up the servers;

To the spam spam boogie say up jump the boogie, to the rhythmic unsolicited beat.

I said delete, fail, I just can’t compete, I’m findin’ spam – spam – in all my email…

No doubt that, despite all attempts at filtering, from whichever source – be it anti-spam software on your own computer or at your ISP – there is spam getting through and appearing in your inbox. What you do with that spam will affect the amount of spam you receive in the future.

You see a rather strange looking email which, upon opening, is clearly spam. It asks you to click a link to find out how to increase the size of a part of your anatomy by ten times so that you can wear a fake Rolex on it perhaps, or some such idiocy.

You don’t want to see this utter drivel in your inbox, so you go to click the “Unsubscribe” link so that you’ll avoid getting any more.

STOP! Never never click any link in a spam email!

If you unsubscribe from spam then you’ve just informed the spammer that the email address that the spam was sent to is a verified active email address. In other words, you’ve just increased the spammer’s potential income no end. Your email address is now worth its weight in gold and the spammer will sell it as a verified email address to as many other spammers as possible. The amount of spam you’re going to receive has just increased by a massive amount.

But the above is only the least of your problems: When you clicked the link you were connected to the spammer’s website. When the spammer’s server sent you a page saying that you’ve been unsubscribed, along with several other pop-up windows of spam offers that might interest you, it also sent you a trojan that set up a SMTP server as a background process and dropped a piece of malware onto a couple of your ports to open them without being detected.

Welcome to the Botnet! You’re now unknowingly part of a distributed computing initiative, run by a criminal gang, serving spam and illegal porn to everyone. Your computer might also be used as part of a DDOS attack on a legitimate company, too. In fact, now the spammers have control of your computer so there’s no telling what they might use it for!

The same would have happened if you’d clicked the link to view their offer, too. That’s why you should never click any link in a spam email.

Some people think that to get revenge on the spammer they can just return the spam to where it came from and bombard the spammer’s server with a taste of their own medicine. The spammer is overwhelmed – not with their own spam but with glee when you do this. You’ve just confirmed that your email address is active…see above.

The best advice I can give you is this: when you get spam in your email – as soon as you realize that it’s spam – delete it. Don’t read it; don’t forward it; and whatever you do don’t click any links in it. Report it if you can to your ISP or the relevant authority, yes; and help get the spammer closed down, traced, and prosecuted.

Make sure that your incoming mail is your delight, not a spammer’s delight.

Continued

If you have ever wondered what would happen if you were to actually respond to the myriad number of spam messages you probably receive, then check out the article “Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife” on Network World.

The article’s premise is a an interesting one: what happens if you actually respond to every spam message you receive? The results are nothing shocking as the “test subject” finds that everything is complete ’snake oil’ (i.e. false promises). On top of that, not only did replying to spam lead to more email, but also a flood of more standard mail was delivered to her doorstep.

Again, the findings of this article are nothing surprising, but it is a very good (and quick) read well worth your time.

We all get spam in our email. Probably lot of it. We get the guys trying to get our help transferring millions of dollars out of his country. We get the Viagra ads. We get the mortgage deals. And, yes, we get Britney Spears nude pics. Of course, they are fake. They are designed to lure you into clicking the link.

Ever wondered what happens when you click the link? Well the guys at Sophos think about it. They created a video to show you what happens when you click the link. And they use Google Earth to show how the Internet makes these scams so hard to track.

And now you know. Get Britney in your email? Steer clear of it.