Blank Emails

[Pinbin]

I wanted to understand why some emails come across blank, all I see is the head and this message:

There are no parts that can be displayed inline.

But when I click on view source you can tell that there is something there. Is there some filter I have turned on that is preventing me from seeing the content of this email or something?

[Wazoo]

I've never seen your sample error message, but I'll make the easy assumption that I'm not using the same application. There is a ton-load of previous discussion on "blank e-mails" . but am also guessing that it's aged past your (assumed) 30-day default for looking at the Forum contents. Try the search tool and see if this will pop any of the previous up. In the past, there was several distinguising "marks" contained in the headers of these (usually) "busted" e-mails .. like Message ID: looking some like e>D0 for example .... if it's any help, I've received 20-30 of these myself over the last week, and that's after a spell of a couple of months wthout any of them ...???

[Robert Slade]

I'm getting a load of these too. They just consist of a header - sometimes even the suject is missing. The consenus is they they are the reamins of a worm that has run it's course. You can report them through SC. Just use the Outlook/Endura hack - header in the top and someting like - no body received in the bottom box.

Rob

[Miss Betsy]

You really shouldn't be opening spam email EXCEPT in view source.

And if you are forwarding, it should be as attachment so you wouldn't see anything.

Opening spam email can activate web bugs that phone home and say "Here is a live address!" If you are seeing something in 'view source' and not when you 'open' it, then those are the web bugs - the spammer is either confirming live addresses or forgot to put the spam message in.

Miss Betsy

[DavidT]

I am pretty sure that "Pinbin" is talking about the SC webmail interface, because in SC webmail, when you open a message, instead of the body of the message, you are often presented with this instead:

There are no parts that can be displayed inline.

That's a message specific to IMP/Horde, the webmail system used at SpamCop, and so before we risk going further afield from the possible answer desired, we need to have "Pinbin" tell us if he/she is talking about reading mail using the SpamCop webmail system. Are you?

This message was originally posted to the SC Email forum and then moved to "Help," but if Pinbin's answer is "yes," then the answers posted so far are off track and the thread needs to be moved back to where it originated.

There's an old thread about this topic in the Email forum here:

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=369

DT

[Miss Betsy]

I think that you are probably correct.

I am not completely sure I understand what I read in your link, but there was still a warning similar to mine.

I wonder why people /want/ to see things in HTML in email? They must get different kinds of emails than I do.

Miss Betsy

[dbiel]

I wanted to understand why some emails come across blank, all I see is the head and this message:

There are no parts that can be displayed inline.

I believe that DT is closest to the point.

The fact is that there are a lot of email that are blank, header only, no body; and Pinbin seems to be asking why.

The most common reason is that the sender (person or program) simply failed to attach or write a message. and it happens all the time.

If you would like to test this, just address a message to yourself and enter a subject line only (or even leave that blank as well) OE will warn you that the fields are blank, but it will let you send it anyway. Note: There may be some programs that will not permit it.

Far less likely, but still possible, is that there was some "flaw" in the message body that caused one of the servers in the mail path to strip off the body, leaving only the headers.

And additionally, the all to famous, something went wrong.

Edit 8-18-04: Looks like I am wrong again, though the information above is correct it was not the answer to the question, read the posts that follow.

Again, more information was provided and therefor better answers were given.

[Pinbin]

Yeah, what is happening is when I open up a message it's totally blank. This isn't in the preview function when I'm screening my spam mail. This is stuff that's actually in my inbox and I know it's safe and I know what's in it. When I open it up it's just blank when that message, it's not so much an error message as it is just notifying me that there is nothing to show. Now when I forward the message for example to a full mail client such as Outlook, then when I open up the message it is no longer blank. Now I haven't seen this happen on messages that are sent to me with just text. It only seems to happen with certain companies who are sending me things such as newsletters where I guess the information in the email is being gather from a website. Forgive me for not using the right terminolody when describing this stuff. Maybe this is just the way Spamcop is supposed to work, which is fine, I just need to know because I am worried I screwed up something in my settings.

*****

I just wanted to add that what am talking about is the Spamcop Webmail system, sorry if I wasn't clear earlier.

Thank you for the responses so far.

[DavidT]

OK, so we're talking about the SC webmail interface, and no, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think it has to do with some oddities of the IMP/Horde webmail system that SC uses and the multiple ways that email messages can be formatted (and mis-formatted).

Here are some details...

When a message arrives in your INBOX with Content-Type headers info like this:

Content-Type: multipart/alternative

and the message body only contains an HTML section labled like this:

Content-Type: text/html;

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

and there's no additional plain text portion, then SC webmail will display:

There are no alternative parts that can be displayed inline.

So, it's refusing to show you the HTML body of the email because there isn't an accompanying "text/plain" section.

If, OTOH, a message with the "multipart/alternative" type shows up with both "text/html" and "text/plain" sections in the body, then you'll actually get to see the plain version on the webmail screen, and above it, will be "Alternative parts for this section:" and a link to the html section.

If, however, the content type in the headers is:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii

and the message only contains html, then the webmail interface displays a link for "unnamed" [text/html] (which you may click on and view) and then "There are no parts that can be displayed inline."

I haven't found any settings that will make the webmail system display the parts of messages that it currently refuses to display, and from my reading of the Options (Options : Message Viewing), I think that there might be something wrong with SpamCop's installation/implementation of IMP. On those messages in your INBOX that you're referencing, IMO you should be allowed to view the contents, but on a "multipart" message with only an HTML section, there doesn't seem to be a way to view the HTML portion in the webmail interface, even if you want to.

I'll let some of the other long-time webmail users chime in now, because I might not be entirely correct.

DT

[StevenUnderwood]

Well, my mesages may be different that yours but I have never been able to open an html formatted message within webmail whether or not they are multipart/alternative.

[DavidT]

Well, my mesages may be different that yours but I have never been able to open an html formatted message within webmail whether or not they are multipart/alternative.

I tested what I wrote above very thoroughly. Many of the mis-formatted messages are spam in the Held Mail folder (no big surprise). If the "type" is multipart, and it contains both plain and html parts, then yes, the webmail system will indeed allow you to open the html portion (by clicking on it)

Also, if the content type in the headers is given as "Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii," then the webmail system will allow you to open the html portion (also by clicking on it).

I'm not sure why you would experience anything different than that.

dt

[StevenUnderwood]

Well, one thing could be that I don't even look at my held mail other that the first 250 characters in the message view to determine that it is spam. Once it is reported, I have no reason to look at it.

All of my html based newsletters show me the no parts to display message. Like I said, probably because of the specific lists I am on.

You are correct, I actually looked at some of my held mail and there are some messages that have an alternative html part available for viewing.

[DavidT]

Well, one thing could be that I don't even look at my held mail other that the first 250 characters in the message view to determine that it is spam. 

...and I only look at 100, so that I can use a setting of 20 per page and not have to scroll up and down at all.

The interesting thing is...the webmail interface will show us a "preview" of from 100 characters up to the whole message, and that preview is generated off of the HTML content of messages when that's all they contain. But when actually trying to view a particular message that doesn't have a plain text part, and is of "multipart" Content Type, there's no way offered to view any of the body contents of the message. I suspect that this is a mis-configuration or a bug with the webmail system, and it's now on my list of things to bring to the attention of the SC management.

"Paging JT"

DT

[DavidT]

I'm bumping this issue to the top as well, in that there has been no official response. This seems to be a bug or a problem with SpamCop's implementation of IMP. Let's hope that there's a fix available.

DT

[Wazoo]

Added this in a note back to JT about the "change in the Held Folder button"

[oldengine]

I am receiving absolutely DOZENS of these things. The good news is that there is nothing to read. The bad news is that it is very annoying!

Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 08:07:59 +0000 (GMT)

X-Comment: Sending client does not conform to RFC822 minimum requirements

X-Comment: Date has been added by Maillennium

Received: from dsl-201-144-100-236.prod-infinitum.com.mx ([201.144.100.236](misconfigured sender))

by sccrmxc21.comcast.net (sccrmxc21) with SMTP

id <20051103080754s21005f7e4e>; Thu, 3 Nov 2005 08:07:57 +0000

X-Originating-IP: [201.144.100.236]

Received: by 192.118.0.4 with HTTP; Thu, 03 Nov 2005 00:06:08 -0800

Message-ID: <714a6[3

That's it! Nothing else in the mail.

[Wazoo]

Message-ID: <714a6[3

35448[/snapback]

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3186 - an example of the many returns using the search tool at the very top of this screen .. using "broken Message-ID" as the query string. Point is that this "indicator" shows that the garbage spammer software is still out there, still being used .... this "problem" isn't new, unfortunatly.

Even post #2 in this very Topic dates back to over a year ago ....

[dougoriard]

I am getting the same thing happening. I just started using spamcop and their webmail, and I can't view any images or even text in most messages. Even the test messages I send to myself cannot be viewed: "There are no parts that can be displayed inline" keeps appearing. Until spamcop gets this problem fixed, I will have to route my webmail back to comast webmail.

I wanted to understand why some emails come across blank, all I see is the head and this message:

There are no parts that can be displayed inline.

But when I click on view source you can tell that there is something there.  Is there some filter I have turned on that is preventing me from seeing the content of this email or something?

15329[/snapback]

[Jeff G.]

It appears that SpamCop Webmail only displays body text and text/plain attachments - for the rest, please use the "Message Source" Link or the attachment links, for instance "unnamed [text/html] 1.34 KB" for the following:

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/related;

  boundary="----=_NextPart_000_00BC_01C5031A.76D40EC0"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format. [this text not displayed in Webmail]

------=_NextPart_000_00BC_01C5031A.76D40EC0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

        boundary="----=_NextPart_001_00F0_01C5054E.82A54EA0"

------=_NextPart_001_00F0_01C5054E.82A54EA0

Content-Type: text/plain;

        charset=iso-8859-1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

[this text displayed by Webmail]

------=_NextPart_001_00F0_01C5054E.82A54EA0

Content-Type: text/html;

        charset=iso-8859-1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit

<HTML>...

[StevenUnderwood]

"There are no parts that can be displayed inline" keeps appearing.

38593[/snapback]

SpamCop webmail is specifically configured NOT to display any pictures or graphics inline. This is a specific setup because most people using spamcop email receive lots of spam and this help prevent opening weblinks to spammers which can be used to confirm active email addresses, among other things.

You should be able to view it with the extra step of clicking on the attachment links.

[dougoriard]

SpamCop webmail is specifically configured NOT to display any pictures or graphics inline.  This is a specific setup because most people using spamcop email receive lots of spam and this help prevent opening weblinks to spammers which can be used to confirm active email addresses, among other things.

You should be able to view it with the extra step of clicking on the attachment links.

38615[/snapback]

I reconfigured it to show images because I get newletters with graphs, charts, etc. However, this feature doesn't seem to work.

I can also easily tell if an email is spam just by looking at the subject line. In that case I don't open the email.

[StevenUnderwood]

I reconfigured it to show images because I get newletters with graphs, charts, etc.  However, this feature doesn't seem to work.

38646[/snapback]

You can not over ride those setting in spamcop email. Actually, this is NOT a Frequently Asked for Feature.

You can use spamcop as an intermediary if you want having it forward back out to a new "secret" address or as I do to simply hold and then download to my local machine to view. I only do that because of my wife actually, who wants the HTML mailing lists. If a newsletter does not come in text format, I don't want it.