Hi
I've received an email to my live mail account that is from an unknown person to the same person.
The body of the email states: IS THIS YOUR PERSONAL OR WORK EMAIL?
I've checked the message source details & there's no mention of my live email address.
My question is: How come I've received an email that apparently wasn't sent to me & should I worry?
It is probably spam and an attempt to find live email addresses and the person is sending to himself plus a distribution list in the bcc.
Ignore and delete
OK, thanks. I still find it odd that there's no mention of my email address in the message source.
If they put your address on a BCC spam distribution list (very likely) then the only address path visible in the headers would be the ' to' which is the senders, and that might well be a spoofed address anyway.
Another trick they use is to send you spam from your own address (spoofed) to get around the 'exclusive' inbox settings (which would otherwise route all non saved or whitelisted contact addresses to the spam folder automatically).
Make sure you have active content and graphics settings off for your inbox too, as that can confirm your address is live by 'phoning home', and then you automatically get added to a plethora of spam lists.
Check all your email addresses on here too...https://haveibeenpwned.com/
If you get a positive hit that would explain high spam levels.
I've got one ancient (1998) hotmail address that gets 3 hits on that site, and unsurprisingly gets a load of spam...
Most of the major webmail services now use DMARC authentication, so any emails from organisations that also use DMARC should be end to end validated and indicated in some way as from a known sender. In the message source headers you'll see DKIM, SPF and DMARC statuses mentioned.
Thanks for a most comprehensive reply.
Happy new year to all at TenForums.
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