If you received spam claiming to be "from" compsoc.net, then please read this page

The compsoc.net domain is owned and operated by Oxford University Computer Society. As a society we have no reason to send spam, nor would we tolerate our users doing so, and being based primarily on an academic network we would suffer the severe wrath of the University were we to do so. Furthermore as a society of computer enthusiasts we all suffer from our own mailboxes being clogged with spam - often hundreds a day - and wouldn't wish that on anyone else.

So why did you get spam claiming to be from us? It is notoriously easy to forge the 'sender' address in an email, and make it look like it came from someone other than the real sender. Spammers know this, and realise that if they were to use their own email addresses they would risk having their accounts closed or internet connection terminated, while also making it easier for law enforcement or 'anti-spam' activists to track them down. In addition when a spammer sends out tens of millions of emails a day they don't want to provide the resources to deal with all the 'delivery' failed messages (bounces) that inevitably result from their spam run.

For these reasons a large amount of spam is sent out with faked sender information. To make the spam seem more legitimate to email handling software spammers choose to fake the domains of real organisations. Compsoc, like many others on the Internet, has become one of the organisations to have its domain used by spammers in this way. This practise is very common, and is referred to as a 'joe-job': "A spam run forged to appear as though it came from an innocent party, who is then generally flooded by the bounces".

If you want to know who really sent you the spam then you (or your local guru) can find more information from the 'Received' headers in the email. You will almost certainly find that the real sender was either hiding behind an anonymous modem in a remote country, or that they were using someone else's machine that they had broken into illegally.

If you want to learn to read the received headers in email then you might find this page on stopspam.org helpful (be warned, it's fairly technical).

A sample of other places that have suffered from joe jobs, and have written web pages like this one:

• http://members.cox.net/joejob/
• http://www.ooblick.com/joe-job.html
• http://www.spamhaus.org/notices/joejob.html

If after reading this page you still believe to have a spam that originated from us, please e-mail us, including the full headers of the message.