I haven’t been able to find any information about this online, so I’m posting it here.
I’ve been receiving emails TO addresses like @icloud.com.
I’ve checked all my hide-my-email aliases (including the archived ones) and I don’t own these addresses so I cannot disable them.
I’m wondering if anyone else has run into this issue?
You’re being bcc’d.
If you send a shitton of emails to: blahblah and then bcc everyone else, all recipients only see the to:blahblah address.
Yep, if you’re not on the recipient lists, then this right here is the correct answer.
OP you can confirm this by checking the source or original message and check for the “delivered to” info in the mail headers to see which email of yours that it was delivered to. From there you can decide if it is something you can stop (I.e another privacy relay email), or, the more likely case, just not worth the hassle (I.e the real regular email).
So although the mail client says it was received by @icloud.com. When inspecting all the headers, I do notice my email popping up in there under
Received:fields (I’m not posting the details for privacy reasons).I’m not sure why my email client shows me a weird receiver email. But at least now I know what address is getting spammed!
Cheers!
Strictly speaking, mail clients can’t show the BCC field — technically they don’t exist on the receiving server, the receiving server only knows what address (yours) to be delivered to — so they only display the typical From, To, and CC fields. It’s one of those quirks of email standard and client implementations, I guess.
You are probably right, but what’s confusing me is I don’t own the address that is receiving the mails. Say my address is
a_name@icloud.com, but the receiving address isjuenr5idsnw@icloud.com.Is there any reason I am receiving emails to this address?
P.S. the receiving address is always different, always @icloud.com
A bcc is a Blind Carbon Copy - so it means that anyone in that field is an invisible recipient.
So i send an email with the following addresses
To: me@me.com.
Bcc: five billion other addressesDue to how the BCC field obscures email addresses written i it, any recipients will only see the email address in the To field - their own is hidden. So it looks like you’re receiving an email addressed to someone else
If you are responding to spam mails in an attempt to stop them, you are informing the sender that someone is looking at the mails. The best option is to block the sender if the mails are repeated and stick the mail in your spam folder. There is no point in blocking mails that will only arrive one time. Adding mails to the spam folder informs your ISP that it is spam. Some ISPs are proactive with spam accounts and block them at the server.
An email message can include a tracking pixel that informs the sender the message was read. Just opening a message is usually enough to trigger it, unless your mail client blocks loading external content bu default.
You should never download pictures from unknown sources. It is relatively easy to hide viral code in some picture formats.
So I’m using the default (apple) mail client. But normally, routed through private relay. I think it opens all emails and loads all content from an apple server, then forwards the content. That should trigger tracking pixels, even when I don’t open emails.
Correct. This is a setting you can switch on or off. At least on Apple Mail. And in my case it’s by default switched off.
Yeah, definitely not replying. They go straight to the junk/spam folder ;)
Are there multiple addresses in the TO field? I don’t see how you would be getting email sent to someone else’s account.
My best guess is that they are sending the emails to hundreds of addresses, and yours happens to be one of them, but you are seeing the addresses of other people who also got it.
There is always only one address in the TO field. It’s addresses like
@icloud.com. The thing is, I don’t own that@icloud.comemail, so I’m not sure why I’m receiving it :/
