Someones using my email address
Discussion
In the last couple of weeks i have been receiving emails from various people and companies regarding feedback and replies to messages sent from someones else.
Now this guy seems to be getting a little frustrated that he is not getting replies to his messages and is sending more back out questioning the standards of these companies, but they are replying into my email account....
So far i have received about 15 of these including a Screwfix invoice twice and i have just received a reply from an advertising company concerning this guy to place an advert in their publication, but this time i get an attachment of the advert and it contains a phone number, do i ring it?
But my main query is, how can he send email under my name/address? he obviously isnt receiving and back as i seem to be getting them all.
I have had this email address for nearly 6 years so i cant see NTL giving the address to someone else.
Now this guy seems to be getting a little frustrated that he is not getting replies to his messages and is sending more back out questioning the standards of these companies, but they are replying into my email account....
So far i have received about 15 of these including a Screwfix invoice twice and i have just received a reply from an advertising company concerning this guy to place an advert in their publication, but this time i get an attachment of the advert and it contains a phone number, do i ring it?
But my main query is, how can he send email under my name/address? he obviously isnt receiving and back as i seem to be getting them all.
I have had this email address for nearly 6 years so i cant see NTL giving the address to someone else.
Mikey G said:
But my main query is, how can he send email under my name/address? he obviously isnt receiving and back as i seem to be getting them all.
I have had this email address for nearly 6 years so i cant see NTL giving the address to someone else.
It's fairly easy to "spoof" an email so that the address appears to come from somewhere/someone else (taking a look in my email today, I have an email from "myself"
). If someone gets an email like this, answering the email may send the email to the spoofed email address, hence an incorrect person receives the email. This might be what's happened here. If this is the case, there isn't really anything (feasible) you can do about it A lot of virues (virii?) will choose one email address from an infected machine as the "TO" address and another as the "FROM" adress. The recipient then thinks that it has come from you.
Sometimes the email is bounced back to the 'sender' as being invalid or containing a virus, at which point most users panic and think they have a virus.
Some mailing list / spamming software will also set the sender as being the recipient. It's not hard to do - it is only a text field after all.
Sometimes the email is bounced back to the 'sender' as being invalid or containing a virus, at which point most users panic and think they have a virus.
Some mailing list / spamming software will also set the sender as being the recipient. It's not hard to do - it is only a text field after all.
The emails are too genuine in his requests to be spam and my anti virus picks up nothing.
I also had a reply after he sent an email to a french telecom company asking them how he can change his home address with them as he has recently moved, he apparently has shares in them, the reply was in french so dont know what it meant...
I also had a reply after he sent an email to a french telecom company asking them how he can change his home address with them as he has recently moved, he apparently has shares in them, the reply was in french so dont know what it meant...
icamm said:
All you can do is reply to them stating you are not the person they are trying to contact
I have been, and it is confusing them, he sends another request asking why he has had no response from them then they reply to me again
If i get any more on Monday i'm going to ring this builder in the advert he is trying to put up
Surely after 2 weeks he would have realised he isnt getting replies to ANY of his emails
Assuming it's been done by accident, there's a chance that he has just put the wrong address in the 'reply to' field. If you look at the header of the original outgoing message from him, you could find the sender's address. If this is different to your address, you can contact him directly (not by replying) to tell him. If he has actually been sending messages 'from' your address you're rather stuck, but presumably that would also mean that he's receiving *your* mail when he does a 'send and receive'. Do you have any idea whether that's happening?
In that case one remaining hope to contact him is to reconfigure your email client to leave a copy of received messages on the server (this is a standard option in Outlook Express, for example) and then send yourself a message explaining what you think has happened and asking him to contact you.
In that case one remaining hope to contact him is to reconfigure your email client to leave a copy of received messages on the server (this is a standard option in Outlook Express, for example) and then send yourself a message explaining what you think has happened and asking him to contact you.
I used to get a lot of mails from tesco online shopping ..
this kind of thing happens alot if the perswon types the wrong addy .. like he could write user@hotmail.com instead of user@hotmail.co.uk by mistake in a rush one day .. hey presto no mail to him and all mail to some poor unsuspecting bystander.
just try a few simple variations on the address theme like changing .com to .co.uk or .net and see if one of them just happens to be hte right person .. word teh mai accordingly to explain what's happening.
this kind of thing happens alot if the perswon types the wrong addy .. like he could write user@hotmail.com instead of user@hotmail.co.uk by mistake in a rush one day .. hey presto no mail to him and all mail to some poor unsuspecting bystander.
just try a few simple variations on the address theme like changing .com to .co.uk or .net and see if one of them just happens to be hte right person .. word teh mai accordingly to explain what's happening.
up. We had a similar problem a couple of years ago when we were receiving all somebody else' mail 
It turned out to be an NTL person rather than the other person. HTHchris.mapey said:
He's probably a numpty (like me with computers!)
He's entered the reply to address on his email program wrong - may have recently upgraded the machine & not typed the details in right.
Can you get a message to him stating that can he check his email settings?
Chris
That's most likely the problem. As has been mentioned, you need to look in the e-mail header. It will contain his actual e-mail address as well as the reply to address. Not sure which e-mail app you are using, but search the help files for how to view the header. It will contain a 'from' and a 'reply to' address. Send a fresh e-mail to the 'from' address and let him know.
As an example, in Outlook 2000, select an e-mail and right click it. Select options and you can see the header.
BliarOut said:
As has been mentioned, you need to look in the e-mail header. It will contain his actual e-mail address as well as the reply to address. Not sure which e-mail app you are using, but search the help files for how to view the header. It will contain a 'from' and a 'reply to' address. Send a fresh e-mail to the 'from' address and let him know.
As an example, in Outlook 2000, select an e-mail and right click it. Select options and you can see the header.
Done all that, still shows my email address......
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