AOL Mail Takes Action to Thwart Major Spoofing Attack

Posted on April 23, 2014

AOL Mail is taking action to attempt to thwart a major spoofing attack. AOL email addresses were not hacked, but they are being spoofed by spammers. The spoofing makes it look like the emails originated from an AOL email address. PC World says some of these spoofed addresses include long-forgotten AOL email addresses from former users.

AOL writes in a statement that it has changed its policy to help mail providers reject spoofed email addressed.

AOL is taking this step because spammers are sending email that appears to be from valid AOL email addresses. In fact, these emails do not originate from AOL or our customers. Rather, the outgoing addresses are edited by the spammers to make them appear to be legitimate AOL email addresses. By initiating this change, AOL Mail, along with other major email providers will reject these spoofed email messages, rather than deliver them to the recipient's inboxes.

AOL has a message about email spoofing here on its AOL help site.