Email spoofing is a technique by which the sender of an email modifies or alters the header information of an email. In such emails, the “From” address contains an email address different from the one it was sent.
Email spoofing is relatively easy to carry out, and it is one of the most over-utilized forms of spoofing. It has a minimal scope of being used for legitimate reasons. Usually, email spoofing qualifies as spamming activity and is often used for email scams like lottery winnings, antivirus scams, etc.
Spammers usually carry out email spoofing through robot programs that automate sending thousands of spoofed emails in a minimal period.
Email spoofing has been used in many scams across the internet world. They have been known to target a specific country, company, or group of people using the same website. Having been fooled by the authenticity of the sender’s email address, the users are often scammed into downloading some form of malware.
The most used form of email spoofing is phishing, wherein the email sender forces the user to believe that the email that was sent was from an authentic source. The information requested in the email is valid for a specific reason. Phishing is usually used to steal personal information and financial information like credit card numbers, bank account numbers, credit card pins, bank account pins, date of birth, addresses, etc.