Filtering for blank (no entry) in From, and blank (no entry) in subject line, or no body text
Claire
When I click "blah blah blah" I see header information, and a time or
two I have replied to the "reply to" email address shown, and it
always bounces or is blocked.
I have tried setting my filter to From: contains (no entry), and
From: contains "", and the same for Subject: contains (no entry), or
Subject: contains "". Neither of these work. I would like to be able
to filter both these fields or that body text contains "", and send
these messages directly to the trash.
I contacted my ISP and they instructed me to contact the support of
the software that I am using.
I don't like these messages as if you preview them or open them, they
may be sending back information to some unknown entity that I received
their message. When I check these messages I usually get offline, and
then delete them.
Does Eudora have any way I can filter these messages to the trash???
Ajo Wissink
>I get lots of messages that have no sender, no subject, no body text.
>When I click "blah blah blah" I see header information, and a time or
>two I have replied to the "reply to" email address shown, and it
>always bounces or is blocked.
>
>I have tried setting my filter to From: contains (no entry), and
>From: contains ""
Instead try: Header "From" doesn't appear
--
Ajo Wissink
Katrina Knight
> I get lots of messages that have no sender, no subject, no body text.
> When I click "blah blah blah" I see header information, and a time or
> two I have replied to the "reply to" email address shown, and it
> always bounces or is blocked.
Replying to spam (which is what almost all of these messages are) is a
very bad idea in general. In general, it either tells the spammer that
your address is good, causing you to get more spam, or more likely, the
address was spoofed to start with and you're either replying to someone
who had nothing to do with the message you got or the address doesn't
exist.
> I have tried setting my filter to From: contains (no entry),
Using "contains" and putting nothing in for what is contained will end up
matching all messages.
> and From: contains "",
And that looks for two quotation marks in the From header. That might
actually find some of these messages. It depends on what is actually
there.
> and the same for Subject: contains (no entry), or
> Subject: contains "".
The subject is extremely unlikely to contain a pair of quotation marks,
so that's definitely not useful.
> Neither of these work. I would like to be able
> to filter both these fields or that body text contains "", and send
> these messages directly to the trash.
What's with wanting to look for ""? Are you thinking that that means
empty? If so, it doesn't. It means exactly what it looks like. MOst
types of filters are quite literal in what they look for. (Regular
expressions are the big exception.) Not only that, but the body may not
actually be empty. A lot of messages where nothing appears actually have a
whole bunch of html code in them rather than being empty.
> I don't like these messages as if you preview them or open them, they
> may be sending back information to some unknown entity that I received
> their message.
They can't send anything back unless *you* let them. There are two main
ways that they could find out that you viewed their messages. One is with
return receipts, the other is with web bugs. Returning or not returning
return receipts is the recipient's choice. They don't work from the
preview pane anyway. Web bugs can be totally stopped simply by turning off
the MS viewer and turning off the option to automatically download html
graphics. (The MS viewer ignores the setting about the graphics, so it has
to be off unless you want to do something outside of Eudora to stop the
connections.)
> Does Eudora have any way I can filter these messages to the trash???
A lot depends on what is really in them. If the headers in question don't
exist at all, you can simply make filters that look for <header name>
doesn't appear. If the headers exist, but are empty, you need to use a
regular expression to find them. To look for a blank subject header for
example:
If
Subject:
matches regexp
^$
^ represents the beginning of the line and $ matches the end of the line,
so what that is looking for is the beginning of the "line" immediately
followed by the end of the "line". In this case the "line" is the contents
of the specified header.
There's no reasonable way to look for there being nothing visible in the
body of the message because the filters don't distinguish what is visible
and what isn't. You can use the same techniques as with the headers, but
you probably won't accomplish much that way unless something is actually
deleting the contents of the body of the message somewhere along the line.
--
Katrina