Why am I receiving emails sent to another address that only shares my prefix?

AVmailer6 · 20 Dec 2016, 03:17 PM

Generically, I'm at johnd@live.com and the intended email recipient is johnd@sbcglobal.net. Why would I get periodic emails sent to him from a variety of senders? Those are the real domains and the prefixes are the same character length as the real ones, if that matters.

I assume the other John Doe is receiving all the same emails but I shouldn't be getting any of them and I'm not in the actual mailing lists from what I can see (based on asking some of the senders, though they've been non-technical people and don't dig into it much). It seems like a weird glitch between the routing to @live.com and @sbcglobal.net and I'd be surprised if I was the only one affected. These receipts have gone on for several years and attempts to figure out why have been futile. I've used various outlook.com (aka live.com) filters to auto-delete them but new senders (or the same people using new addresses) periodically require me to update my filters. Most of them are notices from agencies related to a health care system, rotary clubs and random product mailing lists that the other John Doe signed up for. I doubt I'm getting all emails sent to him, though. I get anywhere from 0 to 30 of these emails a month, and I'm not sure if the variability is a clue to the cause.

Over the past few years I've emailed several of the senders asking for a fix but the only responses have been a few rounds of mild interest from busy office types. I've also emailed the other John Doe about it but he's never replied and I don't know why (his email appears to be for business). It's more of a technical curiosity than a real nuisance, but I've told the senders that I'm getting semi-private emails and you'd think they'd care to do something about it! What could be the technical issue causing this domain routing confusion?

petergh · 20 Dec 2016, 04:22 PM

Post the sanitized full headers of one such email here, and I'm sure someone will be able to help you.

AVmailer6 · 21 Dec 2016, 05:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by petergh

Post the sanitized full headers of one such email here, and I'm sure someone will be able to help you.

I decided to not post the message source for privacy reasons (too many arcane details).

I think the root of the problem is this line:

X-Yahoo-Forwarded: From johnd@sbcglobal.net To johnd@live.com

The guy has it set so everything's being forwarded to my address, due to some long-ago mistake, probably. Senders have no way of controlling that because it's tied to his address, not their mailing lists.

I'm working to get it fixed and maybe this will help others with the same mystery. Thanks for getting me to study the message source more closely!

20 Dec 2016, 03:17 PM	#1
AVmailer6 Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2016 Posts: 2	Why am I receiving emails sent to another address that only shares my prefix? Generically, I'm at johnd@live.com and the intended email recipient is johnd@sbcglobal.net. Why would I get periodic emails sent to him from a variety of senders? Those are the real domains and the prefixes are the same character length as the real ones, if that matters. I assume the other John Doe is receiving all the same emails but I shouldn't be getting any of them and I'm not in the actual mailing lists from what I can see (based on asking some of the senders, though they've been non-technical people and don't dig into it much). It seems like a weird glitch between the routing to @live.com and @sbcglobal.net and I'd be surprised if I was the only one affected. These receipts have gone on for several years and attempts to figure out why have been futile. I've used various outlook.com (aka live.com) filters to auto-delete them but new senders (or the same people using new addresses) periodically require me to update my filters. Most of them are notices from agencies related to a health care system, rotary clubs and random product mailing lists that the other John Doe signed up for. I doubt I'm getting all emails sent to him, though. I get anywhere from 0 to 30 of these emails a month, and I'm not sure if the variability is a clue to the cause. Over the past few years I've emailed several of the senders asking for a fix but the only responses have been a few rounds of mild interest from busy office types. I've also emailed the other John Doe about it but he's never replied and I don't know why (his email appears to be for business). It's more of a technical curiosity than a real nuisance, but I've told the senders that I'm getting semi-private emails and you'd think they'd care to do something about it! What could be the technical issue causing this domain routing confusion? Last edited by AVmailer6 : 20 Dec 2016 at 03:34 PM.

20 Dec 2016, 04:22 PM	#2
petergh Master of the @ Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 1,302	Post the sanitized full headers of one such email here, and I'm sure someone will be able to help you.