Weird Spam Emails

[sdarken]

In the past couple of days I have had several spam emails like this one:

----- Original Message -----
From: <mandy691@cranfield.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 09:34
Subject: Hello Tim


Tim,


It was great to talk to you today I should have the propsal done by tommorrow


Take Care,

Susan


These have been sent to various public email addresses that I use (for different websites).

I presume that lots of people will respond to say. "I am not Tim". But are they really just trying to collect a list of valid emails? Seems like a pretty tedious and pointless process since most people wont bother responding even if the email address is valid.

By the way, the emails are all being sent with a reply-to address of Cranfield University in England (cranfield.ac.uk).

Anyone have any ideas on the purpose of these emails.
- Simon

[Rhea]

Hey Simon,

Got that one this morning.

Maybe they're not looking for confirmations. Maybe it's just a way of 'pinging' emails to see if they're valid. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of spammers? :rolleyes:

[Scuba]

OOr some student's final project (Hell know what is he working on)

In two week's you will see it on a newspaper as "new research find that web users who are not names 'Tim' prefer chocolate over ***" :rolleyes: