...of the scam. These so-called "phishing" attacks involve the mass distribution of spoof e-mail messages with returnaddresses, links, and branding which appear to come from banks, insurance agencies, retailers or credit card companies...
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2003/12/16/199234/Yule-be-sorry.htm
...confirm that it is genuine. As most spams are automatically produced and replies will not reach the sender because the returnaddresses are false, a positive response usually guarantees a genuine sender, he says. The company will be releasing a corporate...
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2003/07/01/195560/Stopping-the-Spammers.htm
...overflows trying to over-write returnaddresses and are able to trigger a segmentation...composed by the previous three returnaddresses, into a private area. Then...returns, the previous chain of returnaddresses is compared with the saved...
http://xmail.eye-catcher.com/gmm.pdf