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A friend of mine has just received an email from my name @ medexplorer.com i don't have an account with Medexplorer, and it has a link which neither one of us has clicked. What could this be and how do I stop it?

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First, you cannot stop someone from sending emails from an account that they set up.

Second, if you have a common name (Chris?) then this is not unusual at all to get phishing emails (or emails with infected links). Spam has been happening for a very long time.

Third, if the email address included your last name, then it is possible that either you or your friend has had their email accounts compromised and the address books mined for contacts. If this is the case, I highly recommend changing passwords and implementing 2-factor authentication (if available).

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Email uses a protocol called SMTP - it was designed a very long time ago in a time when there was an expectation that every computer on the internet was identifiable and broadly trustworthy. Because of this, nothing prevents anyone from sending email as another person. I could send an email as you, as [email protected] - as whatever I like.

There's some work involving specified sending servers (search 'Sender Policy Framework' if you are interested), but it isn't used everywhere yet - and until it is, servers can't block email that doesn't conform to it.

So, what does this mean with regards to your email? It is spam, probably containing malware and you're right not to click on it. Report it (if you use a mail host that has that option, like Gmail) or delete it. Nothing you can do about it.

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    It's interesting to note that for a very long time (probably over a decade), basically everyone ran their SMTP servers as what we now term open relays and shun like the plague! Spammers really changed the landscape, requiring some changes to operational procedures, but changes to the core protocols turn out to be far harder in practice to make. Proposals crop up every now and then for how to replace SMTP, but the simple fact is that if you aren't talking SMTP in and out, you aren't talking Internet e-mail, and like it or not, e-mail is still one of the killer applications of the Internet.
    – user
    Commented Sep 12, 2016 at 20:48
  • I don't think that this has anything to do with SMTP or SPF. The question does not ask about faking an existing user owned email address, it talks about using the same name as the local part of some external email address.
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 3:55
  • SMTP protections would prevent that, however, unless the spammer actually owned medexplorer.com - in this case, medexplorer.com appears to be a legitimate domain owned by an innocent third party. Had the admins of medexplorer.com implemented SPF/DMARC and had the host where the mail was received respected it, this email would have not happened.
    – crovers
    Commented Sep 13, 2016 at 13:28

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