In the past week ive noticed that every day i get about 6 blank email messages in my mail inbox. When it is opened there is nothing in it, not even a to or from address. I dont know if anyone else is experiencing this, but is there a way to make mail automatically move blank messages to the trash?
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Blank Messages In Mail Inbox
- Thread starter Laser47
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Is there absolutely no full header information for these emails? I can't figure where they would be coming from if they are completely in all respects blank. I guess the best you could do is filter them out with Rules. I can't be 100% certain this would work since I don't have a completely blank email to test it on, but you could do a rule something like this...
(make sure the last field in each condition category is empty)
If [all] of the following conditions are met:
[From][Is equal to][]
[To][Is equal to][]
[Subject][Is equal to][]
[Message Content][Is equal to][]
Perform the following actions:
[Delete Message]
(or to be safe have it move the messages to a folder until you know it works 100% by doing something like...)
[Move Message] to mailbox: [blank messages]
I would think something like that would work pretty well.
EDIT: Oh to do this I am assuming you are using Mail.app, if you aren't then just disregard this.
(make sure the last field in each condition category is empty)
If [all] of the following conditions are met:
[From][Is equal to][]
[To][Is equal to][]
[Subject][Is equal to][]
[Message Content][Is equal to][]
Perform the following actions:
[Delete Message]
(or to be safe have it move the messages to a folder until you know it works 100% by doing something like...)
[Move Message] to mailbox: [blank messages]
I would think something like that would work pretty well.
EDIT: Oh to do this I am assuming you are using Mail.app, if you aren't then just disregard this.
I just started receiving quite a few the last two days on both my PC (work) and Mac (home). I don't believe it is related to the software or hardware.
tag said:Is there absolutely no full header information for these emails? I can't figure where they would be coming from if they are completely in all respects blank. I guess the best you could do is filter them out with Rules. I can't be 100% certain this would work since I don't have a completely blank email to test it on, but you could do a rule something like this...
(make sure the last field in each condition category is empty)
If [all] of the following conditions are met:
[From][Is equal to][]
[To][Is equal to][]
[Subject][Is equal to][]
[Message Content][Is equal to][]
Perform the following actions:
[Delete Message]
(or to be safe have it move the messages to a folder until you know it works 100% by doing something like...)
[Move Message] to mailbox: [blank messages]
I would think something like that would work pretty well.
EDIT: Oh to do this I am assuming you are using Mail.app, if you aren't then just disregard this.
Unfortunately, that will not work. Mail will complain that the expression fields are empty, and will refuse to let you create the rule. Try looking at the full message headers for something that all these blank messages have in common.
PS
You aren't the only one getting these messages. They are pouring out of hosts all over the internet. Presumably its just another email worm makings its rounds.
I honestly was going to start a thread about this because i didn't even know where to begin. I have been getting slightly more then what seems to be the norm here. I have been getting between 10-15 completely blank messages. No To:, No From:, No Subject, and No message. It is rather annoying. I have located which one of the 3 email accounts is receiving the mail. I wish that by labeling these as Junk Mail, then Mail would recognize these and just put them in the Junk folder. Has anyone gotten anything to work in prevention of this?
ElectricSheep said:
Oh wow, I feel stupid I didn't think to save the rule since I didn't need it so that didn't occur to me. Well thats a bummer, I was going to see if I could manually edit a rule after saving it (Through vim or xcode or something, but Im clueless as to where they get saved to, probably wouldn't work anyways).
After some searching I found this filter for Mail.app that has a feature to filter out totally blank emails. The program is called JunkMatcher and integrates into mail.app by just using a simple rule which filters mail through the configurable external rules which you crated with JunkMatcher.
It looks promising, but I haven't tried this myself so who knows, (I hate recommending programs I haven't tried first, but I have no real need for this one yet). Heres the link to the site, specifically the part talking about blank email filtering..
http://junkmatcher.sourceforge.net/Howto/Properties/#BlankEmails
It looks promising, but I haven't tried this myself so who knows, (I hate recommending programs I haven't tried first, but I have no real need for this one yet). Heres the link to the site, specifically the part talking about blank email filtering..
http://junkmatcher.sourceforge.net/Howto/Properties/#BlankEmails
Try a rule with [To] [Does not contain] [@]
(or From or Return-path)
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?13@867.HVlFaxbFTOD.1@.68bdb1bb/0
(or From or Return-path)
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?13@867.HVlFaxbFTOD.1@.68bdb1bb/0
I get them here to. Most of the time there are more than 1 and they are next to each other.
Is it our ISP spying?
Is it our ISP spying?
this isn't anything new. ive been periodically getting these empty emails for years. usually if you flag them as junk, mail will catch them an automatically filter them. as to where they are coming from, i have no idea. i have a friend who is a unix admin for godaddy, i'll ask him and see what he says....
I have received these blanks for a while too. My best guess is that the sender is a bot that attempts variations on many potential addresses - if the attempted email address gets a 'bad address' response, then the sender knows it's not an address. If no response comes in, then it is an active address that can then be spammed until the end of the world. In other words, this may be another mechanism for spammers to harvest good addresses. Just a thought though - anyone know if this is a possibility?