Joe Job - How IT Works

How It Works

Joe jobs often intend to capitalize on general hatred for spam. They usually forge "from" addresses and email headers so that angry replies are directed to the victim. Some joe job attacks adopt deliberately inflammatory viewpoints, intending to deceive the recipient into believing they were sent by the victim. Joe job victims may lose website hosting or network connectivity due to complaints to their Internet service providers, and even face increased bandwidth costs (or server overload) due to increased website traffic. The victim may also find his or her email blacklisted by spam filters.

Unlike most email spam, the victim does not have to "fall for" or even receive the email in question; the perpetrator is using innocent third parties to fuel what essentially amounts to slander combined with a denial of service attack.