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Why would someone send out emails with the following information?

Subject: 45wz6
Body: aua

It seems like something a hacker/spammer would be doing but I am not sure what they are trying to accomplish.

Is there some other information in the email that can be viewed which might tell more of the intent of the email?

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closed as off topic by Bobby, Daniel Beck, Benjamin Bannier, Nifle, ChrisF Feb 1 '11 at 19:55


3 Answers 3

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Most probably, he is trying to confirm if your email address exists. If the email address he sent the spam does not exist or is not available, then that email comes back to him. In this way, he can prepare a list of email addresses that indicates which ones are useful or useless.

If you want to view more information about that email, you should view the full headers.

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You could check who it from, but this can easily be spoofed. If you want to see where it's really from you'll have to check the headers. After you get the closest originating ip you can do a trace route to find out approximately where it came from.

As far as if it's a hacker, doubtful; spammer, possibly. It could also be someone just sending a test email with telnet or something and got the wrong address.

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Another possible reason for this I have seen at work, is we run security vulnerability tests on webforms on our web servers. It may be a longshot, but if you have ever had your email address attached to a form on a site you were working on, or just playing with, it is possible that you receive this email because of that.

I have received similar emails and traced it back to a security vulnerability test on an old tripod site I made when I was in high school, ages ago.

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