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I received the following email today which got caught by my spam filters.

<My username>

https://www.google.com/search?q= <my email address>

Rock_jim

Clearly this is spam, but I have no idea what the purpose is. Normally I would expect a link to redirect to a harmful website, but this looks perfectly benign to me. What is the spammer trying to get out of me?

schroeder
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David K
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  • When you write "" is that the same as the username in your ? – hft Jul 08 '22 at 17:52
  • See also related question [What is the purpose of a targeted email without any meaningful content?](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/245438/42391) and [my answer to it](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/245584/42391) for clues about what might be going on there. TL;DR: it could be a probe of defenses, a deliverability test, a poisoning attack, and/or an idiot who misconfigured their spam template. – Adam Katz Jul 08 '22 at 19:00
  • @hft Yes. So if my email address were davidk@gmail.com, then I would be addressed as Davidk. – David K Jul 08 '22 at 19:00
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    OK. In that case the only info they really have is your email. They are probably just trying to provoke a response by sending a link that "has information about you." Yeah it's just a google search for your email, but not everyone is going to realize this and some people might think these spammers have some addition info about them and might respond. – hft Jul 08 '22 at 19:11
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    @AdamKatz That question pretty perfectly answers my question, so I've marked it a dupe. Thanks! – David K Jul 08 '22 at 21:08

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