An odd scam/spam email...question

Scams
1

I’ve got a few throw-away email addresses, and lately I’ve been getting a ton of fake FedEx and “unsubscribe” emails with weird links in them. The links are actually just “mailto:” links so I’m trying to figure out what the scam actually is by sending them an email.

For example, a fake FedEx scam link is

mailto:[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected]

The subject auto-populates to -my email address-,unsubscribe

I'm curious to know what are they trying to accomplish with this scam. Do they just want to know that the email address is valid? Why would they want an email sent to 47+ email addresses?

I know the sender isn't from FedEx, and I know those email addresses above are likely from compromised domains, but what is the end goal of this scam?

image fedexpng.png![image fedexpng.png](replace/assets/files/2018-12-16/07:54:520-fedexpng.png)

2

I’ve seen these a lot before too. It is a check to see if the email is valid and in addition to that, on a rare occasion I actually get a reply. They use the fact that I replied to tell me that “the system is down” and they can update my mailing address through email. Then they ask for a debit or credit card so they can do the old “$1 charge” like the Postal Service does to validate a change of address.

I've only ran into that elaborate second part a couple times but they do peel the onion back sometimes.

3

Interesting - I havent replied to any of them but I think I’ll give it a shot to see if I cant figure out the source of where they are coming from. Maybe a web beacon of some sort to at least grab an IP…

4

UPDATE: When you reply, they are “notified” that your email address is valid. Once I replied, the number of spam messages increased 10 fold.