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I've just received the strangest email:

Possible phishing email

I don't understand why anyone would send an email like this. It doesn't look to be asking for credentials of any kind. Is this a scam which is designed for you to engage with the sender?

user3382203
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Sam
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  • I would say it's just trash. Maybe the guy wanted to confuse you and write back. Is this in your trashmail folder? Maybe some links or pictures are removed then. – Cyberduck Oct 11 '18 at 19:52
  • This came through to my main inbox. No links included. I think I'm one of many recipients as my address was BCC'd. – Sam Oct 11 '18 at 19:57
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    There is a lot of spam and sometimes even strange ones where the sender forgot to fill in some text or where he just tried if the mail gets rejected. This one does not look harmful. – Steffen Ullrich Oct 11 '18 at 20:05
  • If you are very sure there is no link inside the email body, then this is possible some sort of marketing spam. It is craft in such way so only curious audience will reply the email. – mootmoot Oct 12 '18 at 11:21
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    @mootmoot I've replied via an anon email to see if they reply. – Sam Oct 12 '18 at 11:27

3 Answers3

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It is possibly an attempt at Bayesian Poisoning of your spam filter. Spam filters work by analysing words in the email and assigning them a spam value. One form of Bayesian Poisoning is to send an innocuous email that contains mostly "good" words and one or two "bad" words. The spam filter will see the message as not spam and over time it can be trained to assign these "bad" words a lower spam value - which will allow more spam though.

See also How does Bayesian poisoning work?

Qwerky
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No, a phish would be trying to extract information from you in the form of an attachment or a link, usually to get credentials. This is just spam.

Justin Andrusk
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Judging by the contents and the fact that this mail landed in your inbox, this is not a Phishing email.

I think this mail was intended for someone else and maybe the as sender accidentally filled in the wrong email address (this has happened to me once).

user3382203
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