# I keep getting these blank emails .. What the #%&$?



## simon (Nov 2, 2002)

Can anybody explain this to me please?

I get approximately 200-300 junk emails a day (the benefits of a long-term readily available email address). Most are stopped by my ISP's excellent spam filter - the few that get through are readily dispatched by Mail's built-in filter. But lately I have been receiving a number of emails over the past few days that are completely blank. No text or email pushing the usual porn, viagara, herbs, etc. Since there is no body text they get through because they circumvent ISP's filter properties and definitions. I try to bounce them but they are the usual falsified return addresses. I also try to use Mail's junk filters but since the body is empty and they keep coming from different senders with different subject lines I can't stop them from showing up in my in box.

It's starting to become a little frustrating - can anyone enlighten me why someone would go through the trouble of sending a blank email, not once but hundreds of times a day.


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## Adam (Jun 28, 2003)

Are you sure the messages are blank? Have you looked at the message source? Maybe it was sent in a character set or encoding that Mail doesn't know how to handle, so it displays them with a blank body.

Adam


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## kps (May 4, 2003)

Try another mail app and see if there's something there. A demo of Mailsmith, the free Eudora or Netscape... they just might reveal the content.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

I've been having the exact same problem. It's happened a half a dozen times or so in the past couple of weeks. Usually I get about 3 when it happens too. And they are totally blank. no subject, no body, no anything. it's so bizarre? Could it be some form of windows virus that doesn't get through to the Mac?


Oh, and it comes through from my hotmail account....into my mail app. (well it was happening when i was using jag...)


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## simon (Nov 2, 2002)

OK, I looked in the RAW source and this is what I found for the body ....

MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-original-rcpt: [email protected]
X-pstn-levels: (S: 9.7629 R:95.9108 P:95.9108 M:98.9607 C:78.1961 )
X-pstn-settings: 3 (1.0000:3.0000) r p m C 
X-pstn-addresses: from <[email protected]> [966/35] 


still doesn't make sense to me though .. comments


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## mose (Jan 14, 2001)

If your ISP has a web based mail reader you can see these.

I too was plagued over the last few weeks with SPAM

I have directed most of the folks I deal with to a new address

[email protected] ... [email protected]

I now check the .com address at a thing my server has called Squirrelmail. A web based email reader.

I will use this until I am satisfied that everyone has made the address book switch. Then probably delete the email address...or not ? This current process has been a complete success.

Results have been amazing...no SPAM in my inbox - not one. 

And in the SquirrelMail is really easy to go through toggle all the messages and if there are any that need a response to have them re-direct I can isolate them quickly.

Also at my server end I set up an auto responder

==========
This email address will be discontinued.

Please change your address book to

pete(removethis)@themose.ca
===========

The (removethis) hopefully will be a bit of a strategy against grabbing my new address automatically.

So far so good. 

I also spoke with Sympatico - they are completely overwhelmed with the SPAM and virus. Windows users that are not protected are inadvertently plagued with these virus that send out emails. (Or something like that)

Anyway - just to report, the switch has been a complete success and it is so wonderful to get back to not receiving 200 - 300 SPAM mails daily.


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## gordguide (Jan 13, 2001)

Content type: text/HTML

There's the red flag right there; if you can view the source my guess is you will see a 1x1 pixel image which is a sure sign of a webbug. (Basically, the fake image is a referrer to a webpage where the "image" is supposedly stored. In reality they just log the IP addresses and can now be sure you opened the mail).

The bug, being so small, isn't visible of course. But spammers place such code in eMails for one reason only: to alert them that you opened the eMail. Thus, they know your address is valid, and the spam just keeps coming.

Turn off HTML encoding when dealing with all spam.


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