A new suspicious e-mail from info@national12.org

[grazz]

A few people have reported that they have received a spam e-mail sent from [mail=info@national12.org]info@national12.org[/mail] saying "Happy new Year" in the mail and containing a link to a Google Shared Document. This mail has not been sent by the National 12 Association so please don't click on the link or open any documents. 
 
It looks like someone is impersonating [mail=info@national12.org]info@national12.org[/mail] as the The National 12 Owners' Association don't use the e-mail address. I've asked out Internet Service Provider to investigate the issue. 
 
If you have receive a suspicious mail please let me know either reply here or e-mail [mail=webmaster@national12.org]webmaster@national12.org[/mail]
 
Thanks
 
Graham

[Antony (Guest)]

Graham,
It arrived with me overnight..
 
Antony

[Jerry G (Guest)]

It was in my spam yesterday evening and deleted.

[grazz]

Dear all,

Some good news, our Internet Service Provider have checked their logs and confirmed that the National 12 website didn't send out the e-mails and our web site hasn't been compromised (see note below). However, it would appear that some annoying person/machine has searched the National 12 site for all the e-mail addresses it can find and then have sent out e-mails using an insecure webserver that doesn't validate the sender (in this case in Chile) and have spoofed the National 12. Most mail clients and mail servers will spot this as "dodgy behaviour" as the server that actually sends the mail is not the same as the sender they are spoofing, however it there is a chance you will receive spam or malicious e-mail so please be aware.
 
"It sounds like your domain is being 'spoofed' by spammers to send email to people - there are no SMTP logs with ourselves of this email being sent out.

The email system as a technology allows anyone to send an email with any sending address they wish. Most email servers will check to ensure that the email genuinely originated from the presented domain, however not all will perform this check and allow the emails to be sent and received.

Most sent in this way should be flagged as spam when received by others, however its difficult to say how each mail service around the world is configured.

Regrettably there's no real way to prevent this from happening due to the nature of the email system. However, you should always be vigilant with your online security"
Graham