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Query about spam....

idea_hamster

idea_hamster

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 11, 2003
1,096
1
NYC, or thereabouts
OK, so spam e-mail seems to be a fact of life. "Lower your payments!" "Meet girls!" "Grow a bigger...head of hair!"

But when I get spam like the one in the attached image, I'm a bit stumped. Nothing for sale. No like to follow. No ads, no porn, no pills. Nothing I even want. :confused: (And, since there's little rhyme or reason, Mail.app's filter doesn't really catch them.)

Anyone have any insight? I mean, it's not a topic that I'd bother to post about if I weren't totally confused.
 

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Maybe they want people to reply to them, so that they know they have 'active' emails and then they will sell them or just spam you :confused:

That was just a far out guess, I actually have no idea.
 
I think that someone may have been given her the wrong email address or she made a typo. It doesn't look like spam to me. If you get anymore though, it may be spam.

killuminati said:
Maybe they want people to reply to them, so that they know they have 'active' emails and then they will sell them or just spam you :confused:

That was just a far out guess, I actually have no idea.
Click to expand...

That's why I said not to reply back. If my first guess is not correct, then it is probably someone searching for people to spam.
 
I've always wondered that too...you get some retarded e-mail with a title like FR33 C1AL(S ENL4G3 UR P3N15!!!!! ... that don't even have a website or an address or a phone number or whatever.... I've never understood that.
 
yankeefan24 said:
I think that someone may have been given her the wrong email address or she made a typo. It doesn't look like spam to me. If you get anymore though, it may be spam.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought at first, but I've gotten about a dozen of these over the past few days.

Completely mystifying. Even the "testing live e-mail addresses by looking for replies" theory is a little odd. Since the soure addresses are all different, is someone out there monitoring all these people's incoming e-mail to see about this? That's a lot of work.

:confused:

Additionally, I can now report that the reply-to address doesn't work (although it looks rather legitimate) and the e-mail cannot be "bounced." Hmmm.
 
idea_hamster said:
That's what I thought at first, but I've gotten about a dozen of these over the past few days.

Completely mystifying. Even the "testing live e-mail addresses by looking for replies" theory is a little odd. Since the soure addresses are all different, is someone out there monitoring all these people's incoming e-mail to see about this? That's a lot of work.

:confused:
Click to expand...

Definitely sounds like a broken spam client.

(Are their trojans that take commands from email or do they just use IRC?)
 
idea_hamster said:
Since the soure addresses are all different, is someone out there monitoring all these people's incoming e-mail to see about this? That's a lot of work.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they could have some automated program so that everytime they receive an email, that address gets added to some database.
 
idea_hamster said:
Probably. It's still not clear to me who gets paid here....
Click to expand...

In that situation, the spammer gets paid when he sells his list of known valid addresses to someone else. (But seeing as your e-mail didn't have a valid reply-to, there's really no way of them figuring this out. It has to be a borked spam engine.)
 
CanadaRAM said:
It's enough that they can count who was bounced back by the mailserver and who was not. They don't need a reply.
Click to expand...
I think last month's edition of MacWorld had an article on how to make spam email bounce back to the original sender in a way that looked like your email address wasn't valid. It involved some terminal stuff, so I didn't mess with it, but some people may want to check it out.

EDIT: Found it on the MacWorld website... not terminal stuff, you just have to download an applescript. The steps are in the article. http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2006/01/creepbounce/index.php
 
idea_hamster said:
OK, so spam e-mail seems to be a fact of life. "Lower your payments!" "Meet girls!" "Grow a bigger...head of hair!"

But when I get spam like the one in the attached image, I'm a bit stumped. Nothing for sale. No like to follow. No ads, no porn, no pills. Nothing I even want. :confused: (And, since there's little rhyme or reason, Mail.app's filter doesn't really catch them.)

Anyone have any insight? I mean, it's not a topic that I'd bother to post about if I weren't totally confused.
Click to expand...

I dunno, she sounds like she has the hots for you...:D .

I say go for it ;) .
 
idea_hamster said:
Pretty cool, but not so good for spam. I did try to bounce the mystery spam and it came back as undeliverable.
Click to expand...
You sure you followed the steps exactly? MacWorld isn't very likely to publish something that doesn't work. I haven't tried it myself so I can't say for sure. Its possible, but not likely.
 
Please don't bounce back to spammers.

Spammers' from and reply to addresses usually are other stolen email adresses. Once or twice a month I get hit with a bounce back like that. Once I got flooded with automated bounce backs from a domain with a non-functioning postmaster. I had words with their provider...
 
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