fake email addresses

[cloud9]

I've discovered that with unix sendmail you can send email from anyone's address.. and it is fun, (I've written myself a mailbot in PHP :D)... anyhow is this illegal, it doesn't seem to be, but I better check first.

:)

[whkoh]

Actually this is achieveable using telnet too (using existing servers), but most servers have blocked this :shady:

[Goldilocks]

I would imagine that this would be illegal. It would be no different to writing a hand-written letter pretending to be someone else. It's a dangerous area to dabble in. You could ruin someone's reputation, livelyhood, whatever by writing a malicious email in their name. I'm not saying you would do that of course but whatever you do I would imagine it would be illegal.

[Modulus]

Actually this is quite a serious offence.

Also known as e-mail spoofing, this 'technique' of falsifying your personal info is treated in some states the same way as using false identifcation.

You can also not 'truely' send the email as it will be traced back as an 'incomplete' email address.

Attorney by law,

[whkoh]

Absolutely. It's illegal!

[prodeveloping]

I suppose that you would get into some trouble if you started sending your mail under the address gates@microsoft.com or something :). The only trouble comes when someone replies to you.

[Santa Claus]

I use a postcard script, which sends the email from the user who puts their email address into it, all of the scripts I could find worked this way... is this legal?

[Santa Claus]

I ask mainly because this site is on the server I use:

http://www.sharpmail.co.uk :D

[Santa Claus]

oh darn I'm still logged in as Santa :D