|
A joe job is an incident of spamming designed to tarnish the reputation of an innocent third party. Despite having existed since at least 1996, joe jobs are uncommon compared to other types of spam because they provide no commercial benefit to the joe jobber. A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
Origin and motivation The name "joe job" was first used to describe such a scheme directed at Joe Doll, webmaster of Joe's Cyberpost. One user had his joes.com account removed for advertising through spam; in retaliation, he sent another spam, but with the "reply-to" headers forged to make it appear to be from Joe Doll.
Besides prompting angry replies, it also caused joes.com to fall prey to denial-of-service attacks that took the website down temporarily. A denial-of-service attack (also, DoS attack) is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system. ...
Like the original, most email joe jobs are acts of revenge, whether by individuals or by organizations that also use spam for other purposes. Unless the joe-jobber is a business trying to defame a competitor (or a spammer trying to blacken the reputation of an anti-spam group or filtering service) there is no commercial advantage to joe jobbing, making it a comparatively uneconomical form of spam. Joe job attacks in other media are often motivated politically or through personal enmity. A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
Form Joe jobs usually look like normal spam, although they might also disguise themselves as other types of scams or even as legitimate (but misdirected) messages. A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
Joe jobbing can take different forms, but most incidents involve either e-mail or Usenet spam. They are sometimes seen on instant messaging systems as well. In general, joe jobbing is seen only on messaging systems with weak or no sender authentication, or where most users will assume the purported sender to be the actual one. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...
A screenshot of PowWow, one of the first instant messengers with a graphical user interface Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the Internet. ...
In computer security, authentication (Greek: αυθεντικός, from authentes=author) is the process by which a computer, computer program, or another user attempts to confirm that the computer, computer program, or user from whom the second party has received some communication is, or is not, the...
If the joe-jobber is imitating a normal spam, it will simply advertise the victim's product, business or website. It may also claim that the victim is selling illegal or offensive items such as hard drugs, automatic weapons or child pornography to increase the likelihood that the recipient will take action against the victim's website. A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
Some joe jobs are politically motivated, where the intended victim is usually a political candidate, party or organization. Such joe jobs generally espouse an inflammatory viewpoint not actually held by the victim, or present a deliberately distored variation of an actual viewpoint. Large-scale joe jobs were staged on Usenet against the Ralph Nader campaign in 2000 and 2004. The second of these was unusual in employing multiple phases -- the first a conventional political joe job, the second claiming to be a widely-spammed and similarly inflammatory statement by the Nader campaign about the first. Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934) is an American activist lawyer who opposes the power of large corporations and has worked for decades on environmental, consumer rights, and pro-democracy issues. ...
This article is about the year 2000. ...
2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
When imitating another scam (such as a Nigerian scam or phishing scheme), the email will still feature links to the victim's website or include contact information. In these instances, the joe-jobber is hoping that the recipient will notice the email is fake, but mistakenly think the victim is behind the "scam". Advance fee fraud, often also known as the Nigerian money transfer fraud, Nigerian scam or 419 scam after the relevant section of the Nigerian Criminal Code [1] that it violates, is a fraudulent scheme to extract money from investors living in rich countries in Europe, Australia, or North America. ...
This phishing attempt, disguised as an official email from a bank, attempts to trick the banks members into giving away their account information by confirming it at the phishers linked website. ...
When imitating a legitimate email, the joe job will usually pose as an order confirmation. These "confirmations" may ask for credit card information (in which event the attack differs from phishing only in intent, not methodology), or simply imply that the recipient has already bought something from the store (leading the recipient to fear his credit card has already been charged). Like the "normal spam" jobs, these emails will often mention illegal activities to incite the recipient to angry emails and legal threats. A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
Another joe job variation are e-mails claiming that the victim offers a "spam friendly" webhost or e-mail server, in hopes of further inciting action against the victim by anti-spam activists.
How it works Joe jobs often intend to capitalize on general hatred for spam. They usually forge from addresses and email headers so that angry replies are directed to the victim. Some joe job attacks espouse deliberately inflammatory viewpoints, intending to deceive the recipient into believing they were sent by the victim. Joe job victims also risk losing website hosting or network connectivity due to complaints to their Internet Service Providers, and even increased bandwidth costs (or server overload) due to increased website traffic. The victim may also find his or her email blacklisted by spam filters. A KMail folder full of spam emails collected over a few days. ...
An Internet service provider (ISP, also called Internet access provider) is a business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. ...
A blacklist is a list or register of people who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, or mobility. ...
A mail filter is a piece of software which takes an input of an email message. ...
Unlike most email spam, the victim does not have to "fall for" or even receive the email in question; the perpetrator is using innocent third parties to fuel what essentially amounts to slander combined with a denial of service attack. In English and American law, and systems based on them, libel and slander are two forms of defamation (or defamation of character), which is the tort or delict of making a false statement of fact that injures someones reputation. ...
A denial-of-service attack (also, DoS attack) is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system. ...
How to prevent a joe job While the old wisdom was to abandon the joed email address, joed email addresses can be protected from email-based joe jobs by a user using Sender Policy Framework, which makes email forgeries more identifiable. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
Additional steps the victim can take to prevent being harmed by a joe job are to post conspicuous disclaimers on his or her website (if applicable), acquire email filters if he or she does not already have them, and to alert his or her Internet Service Provider about the scam. An Internet service provider (ISP, also called Internet access provider) is a business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. ...
The average person receiving a joe job email will probably not recognize it for what it is. Most joe job email can simply be deleted without consequence (incidentally, this is the action that causes the least amount of trouble for the intended victim).
Other meanings In Canada, "joe job" is a slang term for a low-paying, low-status, dead-end job, especially in the service sector.
External links | 
Feeds |
Contact