Royal Mail Lost Item Scam [ UK ]

[garym]

Hi,

It's not that difficult to spoof a web link as in the one below.

www.gov.co.uk

which looks like it goes to a UK government site but in fact goes to Google and I'm no hacker or computer wiz. I'm not completely sure of this but I don't think the UK government have ever used the .gov.co.uk address. As for spam, I use Gmail and don't seem to get any spam at all.

Gary

[superc]

LoL, but my own spam filter catches a lot of stuff supposedly from gmail and hotmail. 

Actually my ISP finally dropped Postini (which was a pain) and went with roaring penguin, so most spam, I never see.  When I do see it it can be from anywhere.  It isn't unusual for the exact same spam to be sent multiple times a day from locations such as US, CN, BR, DE, JP, etc.  Slave bots.  Hacked computers and networks receiving instructions via Loki Ping or similar to send the following email, using the email address list found at IP#.

[AdeV]

So the SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) was born - and it WAS simple. No security at all. Any computer, in fact, could create an e-mail that purported to be from anybody, to anybody, and the system just delivered it.

Thanks in short does that mean if you buy and register a domain name and pay for the hosting some one can hack in to it create a new email address of that domain name and alter the pointers.
ie (hacker)@gov.co.uk routed to creators email address.

I am lately getting emails from clients mobile phone email servers that have been hacked. Usually the free big hosting ones.
Just gives a link (mumbo jumbo) to click on nothing else.

It was only three weeks ago I had 8 emails the same day with exactly the same content from 8 different email addresses

These things are totally different to spam mail.

No, the hackers can't receive e-mails targeted at addresses they don't own, unless they have hacked/otherwise have access to the server itself. Once an e-mail has arrived at the server destined to handle it, it goes off the internet & into the recipient's mailbox. It could, in theory, be intercepted "en route" - as can any internet traffic - due to it passing through any number of routers & other computers along the way.

e.g. it's not possible to receive ".gov.uk" e-mail without being a government agency; but if the server's been hacked then someone could read it from that server, or set the server up to forward a copy to themselves, for example.

However, pretty much anyone in the entire world - given enough tuition - could send an e-mail TO you that looked like it had come FROM a .gov.uk address...

[AdeV]

However, on a cheerier note ..... some 8 years later 

If Blue Peter started like that, I'd still be watching it...