An e-mail primer

Here’s a recent e-mail that shows how spammers try to subvert digital controls. In 1, the sender’s e-mail address is given an official sounding title, but the e-mail client reveals the actual sender, who is not e-mailing from an official LinkedIn account. This field, where users will normally put their real names, can be anything, including another e-mail address entirely and some clients will show that and not the underlying e-mail address as seen at left. The extended e-mail header is revealed in 2, which tells the truth about the e-mail. A skilled mail server wrangler can read this geek stream and divine a great deal about this e-mail’s routing. For 3, the sender has spent a bit of effort making the body of their e-mail look like an official LinkedIn transmission, albeit with a link that looks nothing like something that the social media service would use.