Self-sending spam is unsolicited e-mail that looks like you sent it to yourself: your name appears on the "from" line as well as the "to" line.
For example, Benjamin Googol might receive a message addressed to "bengoogol@yourisp.net" that purports to be from "bengoogol@fantasticdeals.com."
In some cases (especially if you use one of the most common e-mail services, such as Hotmail or Yahoo) a message may appear to be sent from your exact e-mail address.

Self-sending spam is one version of e-mail spoofing (disguising a message’s "from" address so that it appears to be from someone other than the actual sender). The sender manually constructs a message header with their chosen information in it. E-mail spoofing is often sometimes used legitimately, for example, by someone spoofing their own address to manage their e-mail. However, spoofing anyone other than yourself is illegal.

Its easier to send a Spam mail using programming scripts like ASP, PHP, VB or Perl.
All the spammer has to to do is construct the email message header with your email information. Broadcasting emails with fake or forge headers can be done by the modification of delivery status notification as defined in RFC (Request For Comment) that uses the ESMTP extension mechanism
But self spamming does not necessarily mean that the mail was sent from your mail server.
It could be sent from any IP address. By checking the email message header, more details about the source of spam mail could be identified.

Are you a self-spammer?

Senders of self-sending spam rely on content inducing curiosity and a positive emotional response making it more likely for you to open or respond to a message. Often the steps you take to stop spam are the steps that add more e-mail to your inbox. Find out if you’re contributing to self-spam and how to stop it from entering your inbox by reading these "You are a self-spammer if" statements below:

• You open e-mail from someone you don’t know or from a sender that seems to be yourself. Each time you respond or do business with a spammer, your e-mail address is likely to be sold to other spammers. To avoid this problem, delete these e-mails and never respond. Responding to spam also tells the spammer that they have a valid e-mail address and you (their potential customer) are checking it.
• You use the "unsubscribe" option. Unsubscribing lets spammer know your e-mail address is valid, your account is active, and that you actually read your e-mail. If e-mail is spam, the "unsubscribe" link is more likely to increase the amount of spam you receive. You should never reply to spammers. Instead, help yourself and others by filing a spam complaint with the spammer’s ISP. If you don’t know how to trace the spammer’s ISP, use the SpamCop spam-reporting service to file spam complaints for you.
• You advertise your e-mail on your website. If you list or link to your e-mail address, expect to be spammed. Address-harvesting robots spider your site to extract them. Remove your e-mail address from sites wherever possible. This will significantly cut down the amount of spam you receive if you have a website.
• You use your real name for your e-mail address. Don’t let spammers make use of word lists and lists of first names and surnames to generate their e-mail addresses. Make it more difficult for them by choosing a relatively long e-mail address (8+ characters). And never sign up for an e-mail address your first name or last name (e.g. brown@xxx.com). Instead, add your initials and some numbers¡X (e.g. mbrown44@xxx.com).
• You don’t keep up-to-date virus and spyware. Installing Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software and keeping your virus and spyware definition files current, can prevent exposure to a wide-range of online threats.
• You don’t use your filters. Much like a sink filter catches gunk that clogs drains, e-mail filters can do for your inbox. Most e-mail applications allow you to block specific messages. When an offending e-mail comes in, simply set your filter to block their address.

 If you want more information on how to read or decipher details from the message header, please check out the following links:

• http://www.stentorian.com/antispam/email.html
• http://www.rahul.net/falk/mailtrack.html

More Related Articles

• http://fuchsiasoft.org/support/viewtopic.php?t=58
• http://www.addme.com/issue270.htm
• http://h50055.www5.hp.com/hk/eng/resources/tt_spamming_myself.asp
• http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid43_gci840088,00.html
• http://www.mailsbroadcast.com/email.broadcast.faq/1.index.email.broadcast.faq.htm

Use Object Oriented JavaScript
• Provides better reusability of the code
• Enables your objects to be better organized
• Allow for dynamic loading of objects

Use Object Hierarchies to Organize JavaScript Objects to Avoid Name Collision
• In JavaScript there is the potential for object names to collide. In Java language, package names are used to prevent naming collisions
• JavaScript does not provide package names like Java however you can when writing components use objects and object hierarchies to organize related objects and prevent naming collision

Use the prototype property
• Use it to define shared behavior and to extend objects
• The prototype property is a language feature of JavaScript. The property is available on all objects

Write reusable JavaScript
• JavaScript should not be tied to a specific component unless absolutely necessary
• Consider not hard coding data in your functions that can be parameterized

Object Literals
• Object literals are objects defined using braces ({}) that contain a set of comma separated key value pairs much like a map in Java
• Example
{key1: "stringValue", key2: 2, key3: [’blue’,'green’,'yellow’]}
• Object literals are very handy in that they can be used as arguments to a function
• Object literals should not be confused with JSON which has similar syntax

Load JavaScript On Demand
• If you have a large library or set of libraries you don’t need to load everything when a page is loaded
• JavaScript may be loaded dynamically at runtime using a library such as JSAN or done manually by using AJAX to load JavaScript code and calling eval() on the JavaScript

Separation of content, CSS, and JavaScript
• A rich web application user interface is made up of
content (HTML/XHTML), styles (CSS), JavaScript
• Separating the CSS styles from the JavaScript is a practice which will make your code more manageable, easier to read, and easier to customize
• Place CSS and JavaScript code in separate files
• Optimize the bandwidth usage by having CSS and JavaScript file loaded only once

Reduce the size of JavaScript file
• Remove the white spaces and shortening the names of variables and functions in a file
• While in development mode keep your scripts readable so that they may be debugged easier
• Consider compressing your JavaScript resources when you deploy your application
• If you use a 3rd party JavaScript library use the compressed version if one is provided.
Example compression tool: ShrinkSafe

To read the actual article, you could download the pdf file from the following link.
http://www.javapassion.com/ajax/JavaScriptBestPractices.pdf

While it’s impossible to plan for every potential computer disaster or emergency, there are a few easy and inexpensive measures you can put into place that will help you avoid the vast majority of computer disasters you could experience.

Step#1: Make Sure You Are Backing Up Your System
It just amazes me how many businesses never back up their computer network. Imagine this: you write the most important piece of information you could ever write on a chalk board and I come along and erase it. How are you going to get it back? You’re not. Unless you can remember it, or if YOU MADE A COPY OF IT, you can’t recover the data. It’s gone. That is why it is so important to back up your network. There are a number of things that could cause you to lose data files. If the information on the disk is important to you, make sure you have more than one copy of it.

Step #2: Perform A Complete Data Restore To Make Sure Your Backups Are Working Properly
This is another big mistake I see. Many business owners set up some type of backup system, but then never check to make sure it’s working properly. It’s not uncommon for a system to APPEAR to be backing up when in reality, it’s not. Remember the Health Products Company that shelled out $40,000 to recover data they THOUGHT they backed up? Don’t let this happen to you.

Step #3: Keep An Offsite Copy Of Your Backups
What happens if a fire or flood destroys your server AND the backup tapes or drive? What happens if your office gets robbed and they take EVERYTHING? Having an off-site back up is simply a smart way to make sure you have multiple, redundant copies of your data.

Step #4: Make Sure Your Virus Protection Is ALWAYS On And Up-To-Date
You would have to be living under a rock to not know how devastating a virus can be to your network. With virus attacks coming from spam, downloaded data and music files, web sites, and even e-mails from friends, you cannot afford to not be protected.

Not only can a virus corrupt your files and bring down your network, but it can hurt your reputation. If you or one of your employees unknowingly spreads a virus to a customer, or if the virus hijacks your e-mail address book, you’re going to make a lot of people very angry.

Step #5: Set Up A Firewall
Small business owners tend to think that because they are “just a small business”, no one would waste time trying to hack in to their network, when nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve conducted experiments were I connected a single computer to the internet with no firewall. Within hours, over 13 gigabytes of space was taken over with malicious code and files that I could not delete. The simple fact is there are thousands of unscrupulous individuals out there who think its fun to disable your computer just because they can.

These individuals strike randomly by searching the internet for open, unprotected ports. As soon as they find one, they will delete files or download huge files that cannot be deleted shutting down your hard drive. They can also use your computer as a zombie for storing pirated software or sending spam which will cause your ISP to shut YOU down and prevent you from access the Internet or sending and receiving e-mail.
If the malicious programs can’t be deleted, you’ll have to re-format the entire hard drive causing you to lose every piece of information you’ve ever owned UNLESS you were backing up your files properly (see 1 to 3 above).

Check the article from the following sources:
http://support.fuchsiasoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=34

To know about how to configure your Outlook Express for your site, read below
If you want to see the flash demo of how to configure your Outlook Express, please visit the following link:
http://fuchsiasoft.wiki.zoho.com/Outlook-Express-Configuration.html

Description
———–
You will be able configure outlook express. The following steps will guide through to configure email client such as outlook express. We will not be responsible for any data loss at any time. Maintaining your email accounts properly will avoid issues such as spam, virus configure outlook express will help you to down load the mails.

Required Information
——————–
Your Email account’s username and password.

Procedure
———-

1. Launch Outlook Express.
2. Click on Tools menu.
3. Click on Accounts.
4. Click on mail menu.
5. Click on the button Add .
6. Enter Your Name in the display name field.
7. Enter your existing email ID.
8. Enter your mail server and smtp details.
Incoming Mail Server: mail.your-site-name.com
Outgoing SMTP: mail.your-site-name.com

(Please replace your-site-name.com with your actual domain name. DO NOT INCLUDE www in it.
For example, if your domain name is www.fuchsiasoft.com then your mail servers would be mail.fuchsiasoft.com)
9. Enter your full email ID. [ Example ] email ID @ your domain name .com like office@fuchsiasoft.com
10. Click on finish.
11. Click on properties.
12. Click on servers.
13. In out going mail server — Check My server Requires Authentication.
14. Click on settings.
15. Choose Log On Using.
16. In Account Name Give Full Email ID [ Example : office@fuchsiasoft.com]
17. Supply password.
18. Click on remember password.
19. Click OK.
20. Click on close.
21. Click on SEND/RECEIVE menu >> Choose Receive All
22. Click on unread messages to read your mails .

[ ! Notes ]
Your outlook express should not be kept opened while double clicking the file that is downloaded.

[* Tips ]
You should configure any email client such as outlook to download your emails frequently.
You might not be able to access your email if your connectivity is slower.
If your user name or password is wrong, you will not be able to access your email.
If your account is suspended due to excess bandwidth usage or server usage, your access will be suspended.