Spoofing an email address

My wife received an email asking for financial help purporting to come from a friend visiting Eastern Europe. In fact the friend is currently in the UK It is clearly a scam. The email address is correct, so obviously it has been spoofed. So how easy is it to spoof an email address and how to spot it. The friend' email is a Hotmail !!, perhaps it is susceptible to this kind of thing.

It isn't obvious it has been spoofed. It could have been sent from your friend's computer if they have got a virus. If that is happening many on the friend's address list will perhaps (not necessarily) have received similar.

The return address when viewing the detailed email header could be a clue to a scam, either sent as I just suggested, or by spoofing. Which I believe is quite easy.

Any attachments on the email must not be opened. Doing that is how many viruses are transmitted. Similarly, no links should be clicked.

The links can often be seen just by resting the cursor over them and it may show up in a status bar. Otherwise, "View source" which will open the html in a text editor. That can be a bit tedious searching through, though the text editor you are using will have a search option you can us to search for the text that is a link. The real link will be near to that in the source.

It is also possible that someone has hacked the password on the sender's account and actually sending it direct - but as you say, more likely they have just spoofed the address.

SPF is the latest technology to help combat this but many provider's won't yet be using it.

easy to spoof. Yes this is very easy
How to spot it. That can be a problem. It would be great if email client sw spots this, but they do not. Some Anti Virus software does.

In the email sw I use, I check the email headers if the email looks funny.

Easy, peasy! You don't need to hack anyone's PC or email. All you need to know, probably by being the recipient of an email propagated from an email the person once sent out, the person's email addy. Too many peeps blindly c.c. the whole distribution list when replying or forwarding an email, and so it goes on.

If I have an email client, not Webmail, all I have to change the Email Addy field to "[email protected]" & everything thereafter I send will seem to come from Roberto.

Watch it you!! Or else I'll be sending you strong warnings from team@ .