Unfortunately, a client of mine was recently the victim of "email spoofing." This is a situation where a spammer is pretending to be sending email as you. There’s really not much you can do to prevent it, and it can damage your reputation. (Or in my case, improve it.)
There’s a good, albeit dry article on Spoofed/Forged Email here. It goes into good detail of how to determine where the spoof is coming from, and some deterence measures, although these are more for system admins than for laypeople. There is a nice section on legal action you can take against spoofers. [Good luck!]
G4Tech TV’s Web site has a nice, more user-friendly article on email spoofing as well. More of a description than anything else, but it’s helpful.
There’s also a low-quality video here (Windows Media only) that has "The Screen Savers" talking about Email Spoofing, how to do it, and how to prevent it. (I initially had problems with the way the link downloaded, so you may have problems, too. Try cutting and pasting the URL into your address bar; that’s ultimately what worked for me.)
You can watch the whole espisode or just skip to 47:48. Judging by what passed for humor on this show, you might want to skip it. However, let it be known that I also find the guys from Car Talk annoying, too, so use your own judgement.
To be honest, it’s not all that helpful. The tips they give seemed like too much work w/o a lot of payoff. For the truly geeky (and I mean that in a good way) this might be helpful.
One more nice article explains how you can determine where the spoofed email may have originated. Again, the problem is there’s no real help for the person being spoofed; the advice is for determine if you’ve received spoofed email.
All I can recommend is removing your email "catch-all" if you have one. A catch-all takes any email sent to your domain and directs it to a specific email address. This is helpful if people often misspell your name or if people guess that you have an email of service@yourdomain.com.
When someone spoofs you, it often results in hundreds of bounced emails sent back to your domain. Few of these will be directed to your specific email address, so disabling a catch-all may save you at least that headache.
Rich Brooks
[Yes, It's Really Me]
