Joe jobs
A Joe job is an e-mail spam designed to tarnish the reputation of an innocent third party. Despite having existed since at least 1996, Joe jobs are uncommon compared to other types of spam because they provide no commercial benefit to the Joe jobber.
Origin and motivation
The name "Joe job" was first used to describe such a scheme directed at Joe Doll, webmaster of . One user had his joes.com account removed for advertising through spam; in retaliation, he sent another spam, but with the "reply-to" headers forged to make it appear to be from Joe Doll.
Besides prompting angry replies, it also caused joes.com to fall prey to denial-of-service attacks that took the website down temporarily.
Like the original, most Joe jobs are acts of revenge, whether by individuals or by organizations that also use spam for other purposes. Unless the Joe jobber is a business trying to defame a competitor (or a spammer trying to blacken the reputation of an anti-spam group or filtering service) there is no commercial advantage to Joe jobbing, making it a comparatively uneconomical form of spam.
Form
Joe jobs usually look like normal spam, although they might also disguise themselves as other types of scams or even as legitimate (but misdirected) email.
If the Joe-jobber is imitating a normal spam, it will simply advertise the victim's website. It may also claim that the website is selling illegal or offensive items such as hard drugs, automatic weapons or child pornography to increase the likelihood that the recipient will take action against the victim's website.
When imitating another scam (such as a Nigerian scam or phishing scheme), the email will still feature links to the victim's website and email address. In these instances, the joe-jobber is hoping that the recipient will notice the email is fake, but mistakenly think the victim is behind the "scam".
When imitating a legitimate email, the Joe job will usually pose as an order confirmation. These "confirmations" may ask for credit card information, or simply imply that the recipient has already bought something from the store (leading the recipient to fear his credit card has already been charged). Like the "normal spam" jobs, these emails will often mention illegal activities to incite the recipient to angry emails and legal threats.
How it works
Joe jobs intend to capitalize on general hatred for spam email. They usually forge from addresses and email headers so that angry replies are directed to the victim. Joe job victims also risk losing their website due to complaints to their Internet Service Providers, and even increased bandwidth costs (or server overload) due to increased website traffic. The victim may also find his or her email blacklisted by spam filters.
Unlike most email spam, the victim does not have to "fall for" or even receive the email in question; the perpetrator is using innocent third parties to fuel what essentially amounts to slander combined with a denial of service attack.
How to prevent a Joe Job
Short of abandoning a Joed email address or website URL, the only steps the victim can take to prevent being harmed by a Joe job are to post conspicuous disclaimers on his or her website (if applicable), acquire email filters if he or she does not already have them, and to alert his or her Internet Service Provider about the scam.
The average person receiving a Joe job email will probably not recognize it for what it is. Most Joe job email can simply be deleted without consequence (incidentally, this is the action that causes the least amount of trouble for the intended victim).
