What is the likely source of a recent flurry of bogus emails supposedly from trusted correspondents, with no subject, no message and only a link (which I never click)?

Question

I don't know that this is the community I should be addressing, but I can't find any dedicated to Apple's Mail appllication that came with my iMac or OS.
I've always been fortunate (as I'm told all Apple product users are) to have little trouble with phony messages or invasive viruses, etc.  Lately, however, I have been getting numerous (a couple a day or so) bogus emails suppossedly from my brother or niece or a friend.  They frequently have no subject line and often give return email addresses that make no sense and bear no resemblance to the actual addresses of the supposed senders.  What is goin on?  Is my computer infected? How do I find out? How do I go about correcting the problem?

Answer 1

Your computer is not infected, and it's not anything you have done nor anything you can do about it. Someone else's computer or email account has been hacked and harvested to send out spam messages. My guess is someone's computer with a link to Facebook has been hacked, since the messages like this I've received have all been people on Facebook.
All you can do is delete the messages, and if you have a spam filter looks at the email addresses in your address book, whitelist the actual addresses you wish to allow through and then start marking these bogus messages as spam.
Regards.