How to identify bogus/bot clicks

[KDavis14]

I know all email metrics are hard to trust at the moment but we have seen cases where an email will show over 800 opens. (see below).

We know a lot of marketers are seeing less opens being reported, as are we on a lot of our marketing emails. This email happens to be a sales emails, but the enormous amount of opens is strange to me. Even if this email was forwarded it is still a lot, and the number goes up everyday. 

Has anyone else encountered anything like this? Any tips for what causes this?

[Ben_M]

If a spam filter thinks the message is spam, or contains spam links it could be opening it to inspect and if this is blasted to a domain at once, it could cause erratic behavior.  800 does seem a bit excessive though.  Is it limited to a specific domain or is this happening more broadly with the sales email across multiple domains?

[KDavis14]

Right, about the spam filter opening it. But wouldn't it open the email only one time?? That is my understanding anyway. Why it would need to be opened multiple times by the filter doesn't make sense to me. Also, the spam filter activity should happen all at once, not continue to happen day after day. But we've seen the open # creep up over the course of this week. starting with 791 early this week, then 800, and now it's at 821. Part of me wants to wonder if these are legit opens and the email has been forwarded around, but... is that wishful thinking?