If you haven't thank your lucky stars. If you don't know what spoofing is, it is defined as In the context of network security, a spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate advantage.

It is not a victimless crime, there isn't just one victim here but anywhere from three to three hundred depending on how big you contact list is. Even I, with all my firewalls and mid level security on my laptop had someone send out over 200 e-mails with my name attached for of all things Viagra. Now some who know me see this as uncharacteristic and down right laughable while others have not been so nice.

No one likes to find out that what they thought was secure isn't. It's no better than identity theft and can ruin reputations, friendships and future relationships.

So how do you rememdy it if you are a victim? Well if you are the receiver of such malicious mail, you can do several things before getting angry at the alleged sender. First you can send a seperate  e-mail to the supposed sender and ask if they actually sent it. Or you can pick up a phone if you have the person's number and call them and ask. Believe me if the person didn't send it they will be just as upset as you are and try to fix the problem.

If you find that you are the person whose name is being spoofed, you can contact the server, in my case MSN, and report it. Also, you can do what I did and delete your entire list of contacts so it won't happen again. Yes, it may sound extreme, but how often do you want to keep explaining to people you didn't send junk mail to them?

Bottom line, if you've been spoofed check it out first before you ruin any relationships and then go from there.