Legal and Contact Information

Occasionally, large amounts of spam (unwanted mass mails) and phishing attempts are spread which are falsely claiming an e-mail address in the domain rp-photonics.com as the sender (e-mail spoofing), sometimes even the address of the managing director. (Some “returned” mails then arrive at RP Photonics, so that we see them.) Some of those mails have attachments containing malware, and others try to make you click on a dubious link. Obviously, behind such activities there are criminals who try to gain trust from possible victims by pretending that their mails are from RP Photonics, a reputable source. Some of them are also abusing our company logo and further data, e.g. our telephone number.

We can give some indications for checking whether such mails are from us:

• Our mails are all properly formatted, written with decent language etc.; the style is very different from what spammers typically use. (Fortunately, spammers normally invest very little time into optimizing such mails; they are mostly targeting easy victims, who do not critically check what to accept.)
• Of course, RP Photonics is never sending out mails concerning items which are totally unrelated to its business. However, some abuse also happens in the context of photonics.
• All our mails come from the domain rp-photonics.com, never e.g. from gmail. Note, however, that the sender address can easily be forged when messages are not digitally signed.
• Messages from Dr. Paschotta, the founder and managing director of RP Photonics, (but not our newsletter mailings) are always digitally signed; the signature can be validated by your e-mail program and then confirms that a mail is really from Dr. Paschotta.
• RP Photonics may occasionally ask you to click on a link in our domain (rp-photonics.com), e.g. to view one of our web pages such as an encyclopedia or blog article, but not on dubious other domains.
• Since 10/2017, we are using so-called SPF records, with which mail providers can verify that a mail really comes from our domain. If your provider uses that technique, you don't receive such forged mails. Unfortunately, most e-mail providers do not check such records since most sender domains are not (yet) using them.
• In case of doubt, just forward such an alleged RP Photonics message to us, and we will tell you whether it was from us.

We detected a bigger round of such abuse in June 2017, again in May 2020. Targeted companies are usually in the areas of optics and electronics.

Unfortunately, there is little RP Photonics can do to prevent such e-mails; note that these e-mails are not delivered by the server which processes legitimate RP Photonics mails, but by other servers somewhere in the world on which RP Photonics has no control whatsoever. The same happens to many other companies. Such practices will end only once it is established that each e-mail has to be verified with a digital signature or with an SPF record.

Please do not put our addresses or our domain on any e-mail blacklist. Filtering criteria should be based on e-mail content and possibly other indicators, rather than on the sender or return address, which can unfortunately be forged without any special technical means.