Last September I proposed to my girlfriend.

“What does that have to do with emails?” - I hear you ask.

Well, I couldn’t just say “Let’s go to a nice hotel in Brighton for the weekend” and Liz (the girlfriend) not be suspicious. And that would spoil the fun. I decided to pretend to be on a gig that needed her with me.

Most of the time when I do have a real gig, I go with surprisingly little information other than where to park, at what time and who to ring when I get there. Liz however, needed much more information than this to be convinced and wanted all the emails that I got forwarded on to her. Not very easy when it was a fake gig. Time to fake some emails, and here’s how I did it:

(I’m using Thunderbird email client but this can be done with anything.)

Edit your email accounts list – found under Edit >> Account Settings

Change ONLY your display name and your email address to whoever you’re trying to be and press “OK”.

Now write the email as you are the fake person. If they use special fonts and footers a lot in the emails then you can do this.

Find an email sent to you or one similar. I’m using an eflyer thingy here but the principle is the same. Right-click and select “Edit as new”. Change the TO: to yourself and delete any other TO: CC: or BCC: addresses. Now edit the content to suit and hit “Send”.

Change your account settings back to you – a very important step!

You will now get an email that looks like it’s come from your fake person. You can then forward it on as you would normally and hope she says “yes”.

At this point you should be thinking three things:

• Who can I prank with this?
• Who has sent me fake emails?
• Should I ever believe anything I get over email again?
  I can’t help you with the first two, but the last one is easy – NOPE!