mime-attachment

Question

mime-attachment

Recently I started randomly getting mime-attachments from a few emailers in my Mail app. It's not all the time and definitely is random. The sender is NOT sending any sort of attachment, he is only typing a few lines of text in the email. When it arrives to me, it has the subject, but no body content. Rather, it only has "mime-attachment."

It looks like this (w/ "Long Headers"):

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian <XXXX@sbcglobal.net>
Date: June 5, 2007 8:43:01 AM EDT
To: Michael Wilson
Subject: weekend golfing
X-From_: XXXX@sbcglobal.net Tue Jun 5 08:43:04 2007
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Envelope-From: XXXX@sbcglobal.net
Return-Path: <XXXX@sbcglobal.net>
Received: from web83514.mail.sp1.yahoo.com (web83514.mail.sp1.yahoo.com [216.252.120.170]) by mail181.megamailservers.com (8.13.6.20060614/8.13.1) with SMTP id l55Ch2Mx020904 for <Michael Wilson>; Tue, 5 Jun 2007 08:43:03 -0400
Received: (qmail 6029 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Jun 2007 12:43:02 -0000
Received: from [207.124.150.253] by web83514.mail.sp1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 05 Jun 2007 05:43:01 PDT
Domainkey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=sbcglobal.net; h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-T ransfer-Encoding:Message-ID; b=I1Aea/zn8b1UDki7ZSMQnpOfX6YPufbKfZqwD/2KirUma5lyz8rMFEe33 x0jzYAmILiYsaZy39bS2UVtqYKJILR0JBtu1h0ke8rEQBU+B0SynYYOPVh3M2fv9xtT3llB3hC241D+Z lw5JLVXtrUBNlpMjdA0q3BjunOm6M/Mo=;
X-Ymail-Osg: BgpnTt0VM1mnCRiuhniWtuhm.p08QydIu37ID92Hr8Yy_o9MyVK3WSsHffBLmGfIDHBWgME2eQ--
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-817761768-1181047381=:5773"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <11325.5773.qm@web83514.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
X-Antivirus: Scanned by F-Prot Antivirus ( http://www.f-prot.com)

Any ideas?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Jun 5, 2007 11:14 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jun 5, 2007 12:43 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

I'm not in a corporate setting. I have virus scanning done by my mail server. I am the one using megamailservers.com. They have run their own checks and told me that "it's not on our end of things...it must be your mail client."

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Answer 2

Aug 25, 2007 6:21 AM in response to Michael Wilson

I have this same annoying problem, too. Started happening about 4 months ago. I usually just drop the attachment onto TextEdit to open, but it's still a hassle to read the message. I would love some help on this.

Thanks in advance to anyone that has some ideas.

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Answer 3

Jul 10, 2007 6:36 PM in response to Michael Wilson

I just did a little more investigation into that last mime-attachment I received. Preview wouldn't open it, and neither would Firefox. Word did. The document had two "text box" looking things, one empty, one with a short note from the sender. When I said "save", the default name was "mime-attachment.htm". I could save it as an rtf file. When I went to look at it in my ISP's webmail, I found that there was only the one PDF attachment I expected, but the short note actually appeared twice in the body of the email. Is my iBook's Mail stripping out the message? It's there in webmail...

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Answer 4

Jun 5, 2007 12:16 PM in response to Michael Wilson

Are you in a corporate setting? Do you where the scanning for viruses took place? Are you the one using megamailservers.com?

It cannot be confirm based upon the info provided, so far, but one explanation is that a defensive action is being triggered by this message, and stripping away the message content.

More info, please.

Ernie

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Answer 5

Jul 10, 2007 5:44 PM in response to Michael Wilson

I have just started having this problem too. I have been receiving emails with nothing but a "mime-attachment" on it--no text. These are coming from individuals known to me, (some from their business email address). For example, I just got an email from a vendor with whom I'm corresponding, with no message, but with two attachments: a mime-attchment, and a pdf that I was expecting to get. I'm using 10.3.9, Mail 1.3, at my home (the only place I correspond from), on my personal iBook, on my home network. There is no way that I can tell what sort of files these really are (assuming the "type" extension has been stripped from them for some reason. I have just been deleting these emails when I get them, but wonder what I am missing!

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Answer 6

Dav-o

Level 1

10 points

Aug 29, 2007 8:34 AM in response to Michael Wilson

We too have been receiving mime attachments at my office. I think I have narrowed it down to new, web-based e-mail messages. Just conducted a test from a client with whom we have had this problem. He sent several messages. The first two (a reply and a new message), from his PDA came through no problem. Next, a reply from his XP PC from his Yahoo webmail account, using IE (not sure of the version), also no problem. Fourth, a new message from his PC (Yahoo mail), which came in as a mime attachment. Finally from his yahoo account on his PC, he forwarded an e-mail he initially sent a colleague of mine which came in as a mime on my colleague's MBP, but the forward to me came in just fine.

My client does not use Outlook or any other e-mail app. Just webmail.

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Answer 7

Aug 29, 2007 12:12 PM in response to Dav-o

Keep in mind that all attachments are mime, and it is only when something has resulted in the file not being saved with the normal file format data, or something, such as a server, stripping away the file format info (either extension or metadata) that results in Mail saying only that the attachment is type Mime.

More info might lead to some resolution.

Ernie

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Answer 8

JrnyMan

Level 1

35 points

Aug 30, 2007 6:49 AM in response to Michael Wilson

I've just started having the same problem. I received an email from a friend traveling in Nicaragua from her gmail account. It arrived with an attachment named "mime-attachment". While it will open in Word or TextEdit, the text isn't pretty to read, with several html tags in the middle of the text. I had no luck finding a better way to view them. Seems the same email came through fine in Outlook under XP. Anyone out there have a better solution?

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Answer 9

Jun 5, 2007 12:52 PM in response to Michael Wilson

Michael,

Do they support web access? Can you relax the AV scanning and test?

Ernie

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Answer 10

Jun 5, 2007 1:20 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

I can (and will). It's just odd to me that it's starting up w/ this issue right now, as I have not changed my scanning settings in a year or so.

I will report back.

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Answer 11

logella

Level 1

0 points

Aug 29, 2007 10:09 AM in response to Michael Wilson

I get them as well from one guy in particular when using Mail. However, if I check my mail via .Mac I have no problems reading the same message.

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