Blank Emails

R

Ray

Can someone tell me if these are a virus I have MacAfee installed but it is
NOT registering a virus in the past couple of weeks I have been getting
blank emails NO From field, No Subject field, No To field and No content
everything is blank. I am now getting ten or more a day now.

Cheers
Ray
 
D

Dr.X

Ray said:
Can someone tell me if these are a virus I have MacAfee installed but it is
NOT registering a virus in the past couple of weeks I have been getting
blank emails NO From field, No Subject field, No To field and No content
everything is blank. I am now getting ten or more a day now.

Cheers
Ray

Perhaps you should look at the headers. If using Outlook, right click
the address header, then click options. In Outlook Express, options =
properties. If you're using another client, you'll have to hit the help file
or ask here.

Also, it looks like you have "W32.Fullstop.Killer" virus. It randomly
deletes punctuation, making it difficult for readers to understand your
posts. ;-)

Dr.X
 
A

aD

Ray said:
Can someone tell me if these are a virus I have MacAfee installed but it is
NOT registering a virus in the past couple of weeks I have been getting
blank emails NO From field, No Subject field, No To field and No content
everything is blank. I am now getting ten or more a day now.

Cheers
Ray

I started getting them a few months back <OT>- they seem to "break" Mozilla
Thunderbird's POP3 downloading until removed from the server.</OT>

IIRC I did get a bit worried when I first started getting them.

If you are getting many a day, try using EResQ from http://www.magnetiq.com
to see what they look like "in the raw" ;-)

aD
 
E

ed

Ray said:
Can someone tell me if these are a virus I have MacAfee installed but it is
NOT registering a virus in the past couple of weeks I have been getting
blank emails NO From field, No Subject field, No To field and No content
everything is blank. I am now getting ten or more a day now.

Cheers
Ray
Do you also get No BCC field?

Ed
 
B

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

ed said:
Do you also get No BCC field?

You would never see the BCC field on a received email. Blind means
blind. <g>

Re your other post,
I started getting them a few months back <OT>- they seem to "break"
Mozilla Thunderbird's POP3 downloading until removed from the
server.</OT>

I get them once in a while as well. I attribute them to spammers
looking to confirm email addresses by not getting a bounce.

My Thunderbird (and Mozilla as well) download them without a problem.
Outlook Distress, on the other hand, chokes, and requires removing
them at the webmail interface.
IIRC I did get a bit worried when I first started getting them.

If you are getting many a day, try using EResQ from
http://www.magnetiq.com to see what they look like "in the raw" ;-)

You should simply be able to view source in your mail client. In
Tbird, that's Press Control-U while the message is selected. In OE,
there's a couple more steps, but source is easily viewable.
 
R

Roger Wilco

Beauregard T. Shagnasty said:
You would never see the BCC field on a received email. Blind means
blind. <g>

Re your other post,


I get them once in a while as well. I attribute them to spammers
looking to confirm email addresses by not getting a bounce.

My Thunderbird (and Mozilla as well) download them without a problem.
Outlook Distress, on the other hand, chokes, and requires removing
them at the webmail interface.


You should simply be able to view source in your mail client. In
Tbird, that's Press Control-U while the message is selected. In OE,
there's a couple more steps, but source is easily viewable.

CTRL+F3 while in focus - or take the scenic route (file - properties - details - message source) while in focus.
 
A

aD

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
Re your other post,


I get them once in a while as well. I attribute them to spammers looking
to confirm email addresses by not getting a bounce.

My Thunderbird (and Mozilla as well) download them without a problem.
Outlook Distress, on the other hand, chokes, and requires removing them
at the webmail interface.

By coincidence the bugzilla entry for this has sprung to life today:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=228649

I think it depends on what email server is being used with your provider,
in my case it is qmail.

The statement I made was actually incorrect - I get completely empty emails
fine, the emails that I get that mess with Thunderbird have corrupted
headers (See my attachments on the above bugzilla entry)

I haven't managed to see an empty email in anything but Thunderbird yet to
see if it really is empty :)


aD
 
A

Ant

Ray said:
Can someone tell me if these are a virus I have MacAfee installed but it is
NOT registering a virus in the past couple of weeks I have been getting
blank emails NO From field, No Subject field, No To field and No content
everything is blank. I am now getting ten or more a day now.

They are quite common. It's spammers using broken spamware.
 
R

Ray

Thanks to all that replied but I'm still not any the wiser why would anyone
send an email that does not infect the computer and is blank and can not be
read.

Cheers
Ray
 
H

Heather

Just one of life's little mysteries.....lol!!

Don't worry about them.....we all get blanks. Some even shoot 'em, grin.

Heather
 
R

Roger Wilco

Ray said:
Thanks to all that replied but I'm still not any the wiser why would anyone
send an email that does not infect the computer and is blank and can not be
read.

A spammer could send very many of these short emails just to see which addresses don't bounce as undeliverable. Those
that bounce can be culled from their address collection so that they don't waste time when sending more lengthy spam
emails to those nonexistent addresses. I don't think the spammers really care anymore about time being wasted 'cause
it isn't their time or resources being wasted it is the zombie's. Could also be a flooder sending malformed headers to
do DoS on certain clients. Without the headers peeps can only guess, and with them it isn't worth the time to look.
 
D

David W. Hodgins

Thanks to all that replied but I'm still not any the wiser why would anyone
send an email that does not infect the computer and is blank and can not be
read.

The addresses that don't generate bounces get sold as confirmed "good" addreses,
by the spammers, to other spammers. The one's that do, get sold anyway, but
for less money.

Regards, Dave Hodgins
 

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