Joe-Jobbing Can Be Dangerous  
by Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. - Last updated 07/09/2004

Being Joe-Jobbed - or, in normal English, having your email address spoofed in the “From:” line of a spam run - has always been annoying. Now it turns out that it can be dangerous, too.

When Charles Booher of Sunnyvale, California kept receiving spam for products to improve and supersize his .. male equipment… he took matters into his own hands. As a survivor of testicular cancer, Booher did not find the spam for these products at all amusing, and emailed and called the sender to tell them just exactly how unamusing he found it - by graphically threatening to harm, torture and kill the sender.

Unfortunately, the “sender” was not actually the sender, but himself a victim of the true spammer, who had joe-jobbed his email address.

Booher now faces five years in prison and $250,000 in fines for threatening the innocent third-party.

Gosh, where are those false positives when you need them?