Got any E-mails from yourself recently?

[TheBlueRaja]

I got an e-mail yesterday morning - from me - to me - with a combination of numbers in the subject and the body of the e-mail.

Completely harmless, with no payload, so apart from a marketing excercise by the makers of Lost im flummoxed as to whats behind this.

I had a sniff around the web and found this...

A new twist in spammer tactics is being reported, although we're not sure what their goal is at the moment.

Some of our readers report receiving messages apearing to originate from themselves, with only numbers as subject and body.

The body does apears to be HTML encoded, but it's so basic as to not pose a threat so far.

It would be a good idea to investigate if you can drop email that apears to be from your own organization while originating outside of it. If your users do not send such email (e.g. because they use a VPN to connect back to the inside while on the road), dropping that email might cut down on a few spams.

UPDATE

Some guesses as to what the cause of the spam might be have been received by now and I'd like to point out a few:

* Today's date is the number of the beast, it might attract some old style hackers.
* There is a possible link to Bagle seeding as it was done in the past and we might need to expect a new variant of it soon.

Could be a good idea to keep an eye on this.

[Jules]

I am such a sad person I don't even get emails sent from me to me

Thanks for the heads up

[Gareth]

Was discussing this very thing with a colleague... F-Secure have commented on it in their blog too, although I'm not sure I agree with their theory of it being "some botnet herder is checking the quality of his email lists: finding out which messages bounce and which don't.".

It's certainly weird

[Stephen]

I had one in my work email on monday morning with just a series of numbers. Deleted it straight away as I hadn't a clue as to where it was from, cause I never sent it.

[Maggy J]

I quite often get mail from me to me..but I'm testing why some of my mail doesn't arrive at various addresses.

[pedantic]

I email myself all the time, it's the only way I can guarantee intelligent conversation.

*waits for abuse*

[DocDutch]

had the same issue on the email I use...best thing was my email came direct into the spam folder :O.... ow well but the subject was mainly numbers of some description.

ow and Pedantic I email myself all the time....

[greencreeper]

I've already configured my spam filter to treat anything from *@ntlworld.com as more than slightly porky

[Matt D]

Originally Posted by TheBlueRaja

I got an e-mail yesterday morning - from me - to me - with a combination of numbers in the subject and the body of the e-mail.

Same here, via my gmail.