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Ask HN: How can a spammer get .gov address?
I received a spam email on my work email address. The spam filter did not catch is probably because the email address has .gov extension: rgeremia@k1dc.gov
I tried to google this email ID and the domain but nothing comes up. How can a spammer get a weird .gov domain and email address?
- avcnova 4y agoI just received an email from this same email address to my school email, and i was wondering if it was a scam or not, because it wasn't detected as such.
- schemescape 4y agoNotify whoever runs the spam filtering. This seems like something that should be easy to filter…
- nini350997 4y agoI have the same issue
- sybercecurity 4y agoThe spammer didn't - the domain doesn't exist but lots of mail services will accept any email address in the presentation From (or header From: which is they part displayed by mail clients) and it can be different from the return path or Mail From address used in SMTP. Used to be a common prank to send mail to friends as "santa@north.pole". If you can view the full headers, there might be more info about where the email actually came from like the return path "From" and the IP address of the sending servers.
- malshe 4y agoOh wow, I had no idea. Thanks for the clarification.
- kosasbest 4y agoSlightly related thing that happens with .GOV TLDs: People leaving comments on .GOV sites for the SEO benefits. They spam the comments section of pages with their link, because apparently Google treats .GOV differently than other TLDs and you get a better 'ranking'.