I received an email solicitation recently from myself, offering me the opportunity to save 75% off my Dream Vacation. I have now joined a growing list of Netizens who have had their email addresses hijacked by a spammer. I’m told by those in-the-know that the practice of forging email headers to impersonate others is growing, as it is quite easy to do. Spammers that practice this form of deception do so to give the false impression of legitimacy to the scams that they are running. The capability to impersonate another person via email places health care organizations that use email for business and health care delivery at risk. Are there solutions?

Possibly. Companies like Disappearing, Inc., Critical Path and Infraworks offer new products that feature secure messaging. Development efforts such as these may indeed represent the future of communicating with each other, whether for business or pleasure, by the Internet.