16 June, 2008

Reports have been received from members of the Penn State Harrisburg community that their Penn State e-mail address--xyz@psu.edu--have  been used as the return e-mail address (in the From:  field) for spam messages sent out as recently as the weekend of June 14th, 2008.  Reports have indicated up to hundreds of inbox  messages from numerous e-mail systems indicating that messages that had the user xyz@psu.edu supposedly sent were undeliverable for various reasons.

These emails are called "joe job" or "email backscatter" in online communities.  It is where a spammer (or spambot, spam zombie, etc.) inserts your email address in the from/replyto email fields and sends out spam messages.

Security Operations and Services http://sos.its.psu.edu advises users to delete these messages.

-Robert Brinkley