In some jurisdictions, e-mail spoofing anyone other than yourself is illegal.
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Forging an e-mail header to make it appear as if it came from somewhere or someone other than the actual source. The main protocol that is used when sending e-mail — SMTP — does not include a way to authenticate. There is an SMTP service extension (RFC 2554) that allows an SMTP client to negotiate a security level with a mail server. But if this precaution is not taken anyone with the know-how can connect to the server and use it to send spoofed messages by altering the header information.
