I Got Spam

Like everyone else, I get a lot of spam in my inbox. Or maybe not like everyone else, since I don't have a gmail account. Anyway, today was no exception. When I checked my email, there it was. "Info:security measure, we regularly screen activity in the system". Sounds pretty spammy, right?

Only, the sender was me.  Since I've never sent myself spam before, my hackles went up. It appeared to be sent by PayPal, and said that my account was compromised because someone had tried to log in too many times without success. That sounded weird to me, especially since I haven't used PP in years. I was also a little suspicious, since the form didn't use my name, and had fairly poor grammar.

So I googled it. 

Turns out, there's this thing, called a form-spoof. It's where spammers use your email address to send you spam. Since you rarely {if ever} block your own address, the spam email is much more likely to go through, compared to other addresses. 

For anyone else who was taken in like I was, you rest easy. You're not the victim of identity theft, nor is your PayPal account going into lockdown. Although it might be a good idea to log in and just make sure. 

I found this article to be really helpful in all of this.