If it tastes like spam, it probably is

Who is sending you emails? It’s obvious, isn’t it? The address is at the top – so you know who it’s from, surely?

If only it were that simple. Making an email look as if it comes from an address that is not your own is one of the simplest ruses on the internet.

There is nothing sacrosanct about the ‘From’ address in an email; it can be set to anything the sender wants. By default, it is set to your genuine address, as it should be, but you can change that.

Sometimes there are good reasons for doing so; perhaps a club uses a third party to manage memberships. In those cases, if you look into the guts of the email, you can see who actually sent it; but it’s not important, because the club that instructed it to be sent is plain to see.

However, that’s also exactly what the spamming scoundrels do, and they are also devious enough to alter the code inside the email and hide who they really are, or at least muddy the trail.

That’s unnerving enough; but how did they get my email address? Have I been ‘hacked’?

Relax; you probably haven’t been. Email addresses come from all over the place. It might be because your email is public; mine is on the Oldie website, from which it is easily harvested by internet robots that scour the web. Or it might be from one of the many data breaches caused by a company that has, so to speak, left its customer list in the pub.

Well over ten billion email addresses have been revealed this way. You can see whether yours might be one of them at haveibeenpwned.com, which tracks breaches and has a gigantic database of the emails that have been exposed. It seems that mine has been involved in six such breaches.

But, you say, can’t the owner of an email address that’s used to send spam be traced and prosecuted? Not really, at least not if they take steps to hide.

This is how easy it is: create an account at Outlook.com, Microsoft’s free email service. All they’ll ask you for is your name, your country and your date of birth. That’s it. You could put anything you want, and spammers do. So, even if Microsoft did want to give the authorities information about you, they don’t have any.

I’ve no doubt that behaving deceitfully like this is against the terms and conditions, and you shouldn’t do it, but spammers don’t care about that sort of subtlety.

It’s all to do with privacy, which is often a double-edged sword. I doubt you would want anyone who knows your email address to be able to discover where you live by asking your email provider. Even if they know it, they won’t reveal it.

The trouble is that this cuts both ways: the privacy that protects you is exactly what protects the spammers. A court order might help but, as we’ve seen, the provider may not have the information anyway.

Do not despair. First, remember that you are not alone in this fight. Your email service is just as keen to stop spammers as you are – probably more so – and will have sophisticated techniques to spot the rubbish and consign it to your junk folder. Most of the time, they are pretty good at this, but it’s a cat-and-mouse game; each time they refine their filters, the spammers refine their efforts.

Your best defence, by far, is cynicism; happily, that’s something I know Oldie readers have in good quantity. If it looks odd, it probably is. If it’s unexpected, tread carefully. If money is involved, tread very carefully indeed.

The delete key is always your friend.

charge interest and collect repayments within a few weeks. Neither do they use the words ‘loan’ or ‘debt’.

As it is technically not credit, customers are not protected by the Consumer Credit Act, which says lenders must be transparent about the risks of debt, give cooling-off periods and check that borrowers can afford to repay – and it gives access to an ombudsman.

Customers are assessed before being allowed to delay payment. With Klarna and Clearpay, this includes a soft credit search. No marker is put on your credit record; so other potential lenders cannot see how much you are borrowing and your credit rating is not affected. Laybuy conducts a hard credit check.

There is nothing wrong with shopping this way, if you are careful. The danger and the expense arise if you fail to pay or to return unwanted goods within the timescale – and the timescales are often short. Then you can face late-payment fees and might be referred to a credit reference agency. With Marks & Spencer, you could face total late-payment penalties up to £36.

Critics complain that the terms are not spelled out clearly and that buying before paying is sometimes the default option at checkout. This can get customers into a payment plan without their realising; particularly anyone who is disorganised with their spending.

The pay-later companies make their money by taking a percentage of each sale. Clearly they hope customers will be tempted to buy more than they otherwise would. Similarly, participating retailers need to see their sales improve sharply to justify paying a lender.

Buy-now-pay-later will appeal to people who have difficulty budgeting and who might not understand that they are building up debt and that debt, sooner or later, has to be repaid. Just ask yourself: if I cannot afford it today, will I be able to afford it in a month?