Blank Spams
 

My trusty Spamcop account traps 99.9% of all known germs for me. I just have to clear it out once a day. It's been that way for many years. I've grown used to all the regular spams that occur daily/weekly - indeed, there's something endearing about them. The lady who has cancer and two months to live - she still does, five years later. Same name, different e-mail addresses.

But this week, a new trend has started. I'm getting about 100 a day "blank" spams - there is absolutely nothing there: no headers, no subject, nothing.

I'm curious - what are they? Mr Google says they're spammers testing random addresses to see if they bounce, but that doesn't explain the sheer volume I'm getting.

Anyone know?

If you look at the source code for the mail, there probably is some hidden code, or maybe a a web bug - a 1x1 pixel image (probably white) stored on a server with a unique address. If you read the mail, the bug is "read" and your address is confirmed.
Sounds to me that whoever has got hold of your e-mail address has screwed up on teh mail spam run and duplicated it. Best to delete them all without opening

There's nothing whatever to see there - no source code, no headers, no addressee, no sender, nothing. They sit in my Spamcop "held mail" folder with a reference number, but that's all there is. If I tell Spamcop to forward them, it queues them but nothing arrives.

They started on 27th Feb, when I got about a dozen. The rate increased to about 100 a day by 1st March, and has been there since.

I'm just curious as to what they are.

which e-mail provider is your mail account with? Hotmail by any chance?

Well, spams are automatically generated by programs, and programs can be written ... badly. One misplaced comma in a script, one person gets an inbox of inanity.

There's better things out there than Spamcop. The spammers have probably just found a way around the spamcop filters. The old cat and mouse game continues.

This works: Mailwasher Free Spam Filter Software: The Reliable Free Spam Blocker | MailWasher - Mailwasher Free

Nope. I don't use Hotmail - never have.

I have several ISPs for different purposes, most of them routed via Spamcop.

The sender might be trying to send in Microsoft Rich Text or HTML format and your user can only recieve in plain text.

Surely if he could only receive plain text, he would just see the unparsed HTML source ?