Impersonation

I have discovered that someone has sent out a "hate" e-mail purporting to be from myself. The e-mail was sent to a Glasgow charity and was forwarded on by them to members of the Scottish parliament and also to some journalists. The charity has now advised those on their contacts list that the e-mail was not from me. I have a strong suspicion as to who may have sent the fake e-mail. A fellow blogger suffered in the same way earlier this year and at that time sent me an e-mail on the subject, part of which reads as follows:

... he bombarded it (his blog) with hate comments - generally of a racist nature. I banned a lot of IP addresses and deleted them. I should have saved them on harddisk, but I was so angry I did not keep copies. He also sent a lot of racist emails to my Hotmail account, and used my hotmail address to send racist material to academics, politicians and other anti-racism campaigners, using the "email a friend" facility at various news websites. I sent a lot of complaints to abuse@hotmail.com and others, but there was nothing they could do.

It is sad that we have to put up with this nonsense - I believe that a fake e-mail was issued in the name of a Scottish politician some time ago. It would be useful if Internet businesses could put an end to this sort of thing. In the meantime be careful with your own web security and be aware that not all e-mails are what they may seem.