Although it may not happen everyday at Iowa State, several cases of fraudulent electronic mail have been reported.

Some students have received e-mail messages from a sender whose identity does not match the one in the electronic message.

A couple months ago, an incident involving a fake e-mail on the Vincent system happened to a Daily reporter. The reporter went to check his e-mail and found that he had received an e-mail addressed by himself.

The reporter said he had no idea who sent the message, but that he was sure he had not.

He concluded that the someone had found a way to change their name and replace it with a different addressee.

According to Mike Arvold, junior in computer engineering, “It is possible to send out e-mail from a different user name, but you can trace it back.”

In order to prove that it is possible, Arvold sent me an e-mail message that said it was from U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Arvold said he and some high school friends learned how to compose fake e-mail messages a couple of years ago.

They would send messages between themselves as jokes.

“I don’t have any problem if you’re doing it as a joke … if you use it in a joking manner and tell people eventually,” Arvold said. “If you go to extreme lengths, you’re breaking the law.”

Arvold also directed me to “Fakemail,” a Web site created to give Web surfers the opportunity to send false e-mail messages.

The Web page’s program for sending fraudulent e-mail via the site has been shut down, but the page itself remains on the Internet for historical purposes.

Frank Poduska, systems analyst for the ISU Computation Center, also said it is possible for someone to trick the system into changing identities.

He did not want to state how this can be done, but did say several ISU students have been victims of false e-mail.

“It’s not a very prevalent activity. We deal here with probably 30 gigabytes of mail per month,” Poduska said. “It’s just a small handful of mail that has this problem.”

Arvold also said the amount of false e-mail being sent at ISU is infrequent.

“I don’t think it’s all that prevalent,” he said. “I don’t know anyone who has gotten a persistent pattern of harassing messages.”

He added that most people would be more inclined to make harassing phone calls rather than e-mail messages.

Poduska said the consequence for creating fraudulent e-mail is a suspension of the e-mail account.

He said most students are afraid of losing their account, so they do not commit e-mail fraud.

He also stressed the seriousness of the creation of false e-mail. “That’s typically the kind of thing that people in the industry lose jobs over,” he said.

Motives for creating false e-mail can be anything, Poduska said, but some people might send false e-mail just to “say that they’ve done it.”

Poduska said in most e-mail programs there is an option to turn on the headers.

Headers provide information about the origins of a message.

A header will then appear at the beginning of the message, indicating the path the message has taken.

To see the header of a message through the Vincent system, users can type the word “show” at the Vincent prompt, and this will show the header of the last message sent.

He said if students receive harassing messages, they should be sure to keep a copy of the message and alert the Department of Public Safety or contact Mike Bowman, assistant director of the Computation Center.