What is the main goal of email spoofing in cybersecurity?

• A. To encrypt email contents to prevent interception.
• B. To log sender information for auditing.
• C. To trick recipients into trusting the origin of the message.
• D. To reduce spam by authenticating senders.

Answer: (C)

Email spoofing aims to impersonate a trusted sender to fool the recipient about where a message really came from. By forging the sender’s identity or display name, an attacker tries to trigger trust and induce actions like clicking a link, opening an attachment, or entering credentials. The purpose is social engineering—getting the user to treat the message as legitimate. It’s not about encrypting content, logging sender information, or reducing spam; those goals are unrelated or even counter to spoofing. Understanding this helps explain why defenses focus on authentication checks like SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and user awareness training to spot suspicious sender details.