Email addresses are constantly being attempted by scams — be they spammy content, phishing or other types of social engineering. But while many people think they are already sufficiently accustomed to these scams, criminals can use other methods, such as the empty message scam.
The empty message scam occurs when a criminal, using a real email address, sends mass emails without any content, and usually with a subject like “Hello”, “I” or other words that end up being catchy by the strangeness.
The messages, as they do not have any links or malware in their body, are able to pass through the filters of most email servers. Furthermore, with the communication being delivered to the recipient, criminals know that the address the message was sent to is active.
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From then on, the recipient will receive more emails, now with real attempts at scams, whether phishing or even with malicious attachments, enabling possible ransomware attacks for accounts identified as active.
Empty email scam prevention
The empty message scam is much more a test for criminals to see if it’s worth sending e-mail to specific addresses than a threat itself. The big problem is that, by confirming which inboxes are active, they can start to target those accounts specifically.
However, there are ways to protect yourself from this scam, the following tips are recommended:
- Configure your inbox to block empty messages;
- If you open an empty email, do not interact with it in any way or reply;
- Mark the sender of such messages as spam;
- If the sender is a known company, contact them through official channels;
- Finally, never click on any links provided in email messages from unknown or suspicious sources.
