[ontheroad]

Hello!
I've been getting some weird emails this week : up to ten a day :
blank emails with no sender, no content...
What does this mean? What could it be? Are aliens invading?
Thx

[donabel_beltran]

I received about 3 last week. None so far for this week.

[hk.com]

the good news is that you can ignore them. The bad news is that the spammers are sending you those to verify whether your mailbox exist. As it has not bounced they will add you to their spam list.

Lots of spam coming your way soon.

[discobay]

A half-decent email client would put those emails into a spam or junk folder. Mine does and I should just ignore them but the temptation takes me over and I just have to hit the Empty Spam Folder button - aargh!

[ontheroad]

Originally Posted by hk.com

the good news is that you can ignore them. The bad news is that the spammers are sending you those to verify whether your mailbox exist. As it has not bounced they will add you to their spam list.

Lots of spam coming your way soon.

bad news indeed! shoot...
anyway thanks for clearing that up for me.

[hk.com]

one of the big problems many email servers/providers have is that they don't have any anti-harvesting measures on the server. We run anti-harvesters, but don't know who else.

They can sit there trying to guess users email addresses upto 8 addresses per second. After 24 hours they have tried out a few hundred thousand most common email addresses.

once they have the address you are toast, they will verify the address does not indeed bounce by sending you a blank.

[discobay]

How is it that they can so easily generate so many computer-generated email accounts? When you reply to them using an unused email account of my own the email is bounced because their account has already been deleted.

[Zero Gravitas]

Originally Posted by discobay

How is it that they can so easily generate so many computer-generated email accounts? When you reply to them using an unused email account of my own the email is bounced because their account has already been deleted.

The from and reply to lines are usually spoofed, made up at the time of sending. Quite probably the address never existed, or belongs to an innocent 3rd party.

[discobay]

Is it possible to hide your address completely?

[hk.com]

Originally Posted by discobay

Is it possible to hide your address completely?

The domain and email address can be anything you put into the mail client. So you can fake anything you fancy.

What is visible in the email is normally also totally different from what is actually invisible in the SMTP envelop information. The email can be from and to different people and then they BCC you. Your address is invisible in the email.

The IP address of the sender is on the email so it can be traced, but ISPs are not going to give you the ID of the person who sent it unless you have a court order.