4 ms·

Basically, as Nasreen had discovered, you can pretend to be anyone you want when you forward an article, and she had decided to pretend to be my old program dir

by caf 14y ago

Basically, as Nasreen had discovered, you can pretend to be anyone you want when you forward an article, and she had decided to pretend to be my old program director. Does the general public really not realise that this is true of any email? Perhaps there's a need for some kind of campaign to remind the population at large that the From: address on an email is no more reliable than the sender address typed on the back of an envelope.

monochromatic 14y ago
I'd be surprised if most people know that. On the other hand, I do get spam from all manner of famous people who don't really seem like the type to be selling v1agra online... seems like people might connect the dots.
- pyre 14y ago
  The double-edged sword of the effective spam filters on Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail is that people don't see these too often anymore?
lambda 14y ago
Yeah, the general public really does not realize this. Or, even if they do, it's frequently not the first thing that they think of when getting an email from someone they know. You generally assume that the person is who you think it is, even if you know, intellectually, that there's a possibility someone could be impersonating them. Do you stop and think, for every email that you read, "hmm, maybe someone could have forged this"? No, you generally read it as if the person in the "from" address were writing it. Now, you might wind up being skeptical if it sounds ludicrously different from how someone normally sounds. But when it's someone you only know tangentially in a professional setting, and the stalker tones it down a bit and doesn't sound too outrageous, the stalker might be able to slip plenty of stuff by without you realizing; or even if you do realize it's not them, it may cloud your perceptions. Even when people can consciously identify a lie, it can change their perceptions later.

by caf 14y ago

monochromatic 14y ago

I'd be surprised if most people know that. On the other hand, I do get spam from all manner of famous people who don't really seem like the type to be selling v1agra online... seems like people might connect the dots.

pyre 14y ago
The double-edged sword of the effective spam filters on Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail is that people don't see these too often anymore?

lambda 14y ago

Yeah, the general public really does not realize this. Or, even if they do, it's frequently not the first thing that they think of when getting an email from someone they know. You generally assume that the person is who you think it is, even if you know, intellectually, that there's a possibility someone could be impersonating them. Do you stop and think, for every email that you read, "hmm, maybe someone could have forged this"? No, you generally read it as if the person in the "from" address were writing it. Now, you might wind up being skeptical if it sounds ludicrously different from how someone normally sounds. But when it's someone you only know tangentially in a professional setting, and the stalker tones it down a bit and doesn't sound too outrageous, the stalker might be able to slip plenty of stuff by without you realizing; or even if you do realize it's not them, it may cloud your perceptions. Even when people can consciously identify a lie, it can change their perceptions later.