Spammers are giving the old trick of joe-jobbing a fresh twist in a bid to fox email filters. Conventional joe-jobbing involves forging the sender's email address so that some poor innocent - rather than a spammer - has to wade through bounced messages sent to invalid email addresses.

Instead of forging the sender's email address (a trick that's easily detected by anti-spam technologies) spammers are deliberately sending their messages to an invalid email address at a high profile company using a forged "From" address at a target company. The email is then bounced as an unrecognised email address and sent back to the "sender". Since the IP address and the email domain address now match, the junk email message stands a better chance of avoiding detection by some anti-spam technologies. Because of this there's a better chance that an item of spam will arrive in the inbox of end users.

Related stories

• 30 years of Spam - and we ain't finished yet (1 May 2008)
• Anti-fraud site turfed offline after Joe Job attack (15 October 2007)
• Bounced spam messages hammer corporate networks (2 May 2006)
• Authorities get on top of spam Down Under (28 March 2006)
• Email marketing firm settles data mining lawsuit (13 March 2006)
• ISPs must take lead in fighting spam (9 March 2006)
• Work-at-home mum in net filth conviction (9 March 2006)
• Sting nets two spam scam suspects (1 March 2006)
• Spammers adopt stealth tactics (20 February 2006)
• Hey Bill, why am I still getting spam? (24 January 2006)
• The Joe Job DoS attack (6 April 2004)