People's replies to my emails goes out into another account

Hi all,

The problem kinda creeped in on me, at the beginning it was a few emails but now it's all of them. Here's the situation has succinctly as I can:

First off, for years I've only had two main email accounts. The one provided to me by my ISP, Bell Sympatico, and the other is from my company's domain which is production24fps.com.

I've stopped using the Sympatico address a while back. On this computer it isn't configured anywhere, I have to go through Bell's webmail if I want to access it. My 24fps account is configured through Thunderbird.

***

As it is now if I were to send you an email your reply would end up in my Sympatico account. Not only that but you would actually believe that my email actually came from this address and not the 24fps one since it says so in the header.

Now how could this be if the sympatico address is not even configured anywhere on my computer?

Actually it goes as far as this. When I send an email through Thunderbird with my 24fps account that email will appear in the Sympatico Sent box as well as the 24fps one.... In the 24fps Sentbox all emails state that they were sent from the 24fps account but in the Sympatico Sent box all emails state that they were sent from the Sympatico one.

Baffling to say the least....

***

I've called the ISP but since I use Thunderbird (which they don't support) they won't gave me the light of day. How could this be Thunderbird related when that address is not configured in it.

Now there is one tiny thing that might piece all of this together. The ONLY place my sympatico address shows up on my computer is actually in the SMTP setting in Thunderbird. The username for the server is actually the full Sympatico address.

Could all this be because of that or is it something altogether?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Phil

It must be something in your Thunderbird settings. My first thought was actually that you had your Reply-To address set to the Sympatico address, which would cause exactly what you've described, down to the letter.

Are you saying that you're still using the Sympatico SMTP server for outgoing messages? That might be another possibility; you should probably change that to the SMTP server provided by 24fps anyway just for good measure.

Perhaps that'll solve the issue for you. If not, post back here and we'll explore further options.

Hi Corazon,

Just checked the configuration and to field for "reply-to" is empty.

As for the SMTP my hosting people told me, from day 1 which is several years ago, to use the one provided by my ISP....besides I've been using it for years without a glitch, not to mention that this issue has creeped in it didn't happen overnight.

What the hey, I'll fetch the SMTP information for the hosting folks....in the meantime any other ideas as to why this is occuring?

Phil

Ah, I didn't realize Sympatico was actually your ISP. Sure, it's fine to stick with their SMTP server then... Unfortunately I have no other ideas at the moment.

...Yes, I do have one. You mentioned sending test messages to yourself, can you pull up one such message (from your inbox, not the sent box) and look at all the headers? If you're able to post them here that might be very helpful in tracking down the issue.

Well I did send myself a test. Surprisingly I received that email in my 24fps Inbox in Thunderbird. One thing though the email states that it is From the sympatico address To my 24fps address.

Here is the source from the email

Return-path: <philippe.gosselin2@sympatico.ca>
Envelope-to: phil@production24fps.com
Delivery-date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:27:35 -0500
Received: from blu0-omc4-s12.blu0.hotmail.com ([65.55.111.151])
by centos1.misolutions.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <philippe.gosselin2@sympatico.ca>)
id 1RQNjH-0000AQ-Kh
for phil@production24fps.com; Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:27:35 -0500
Received: from BLU0-SMTP39 ([65.55.111.137]) by blu0-omc4-s12.blu0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:27:28 -0800
X-Originating-IP: [70.51.32.212]
X-Originating-Email: [philippe.gosselin2@sympatico.ca]
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP39ED101FC37991F16D5A89BAC10@phx.gbl>
Received: from [192.168.0.102] ([70.51.32.212]) by BLU0-SMTP39.phx.gbl over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:27:27 -0800
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:27:27 -0500
From: <philippe.gosselin2@sympatico.ca>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: phil@production24fps.com
Subject: test
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="------------050701080704090103050506"
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Nov 2011 18:27:27.0567 (UTC) FILETIME=[3A6755F0:01CCA3C4]
X-Spam-Status: No, score=2.8
X-Spam-Score: 28
X-Spam-Bar: ++
X-Spam-Flag: NO

--------------050701080704090103050506
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Thanks

Phil

I am also using Thunderbird, but it's not a Thunderbird problem. I just recently switched to Thunderbird and thought it was a config problem within, but even when I open up Outlook and send a test message the thing same thing happens (overwrites the From header with my sympatico address)

We're not the only ones experiencing this:

Bell Sympatico SMTP Server modifies outgoing e-mail headers | Shawn M. Hooper, Ottawa Ontario

Bell's official response to this is found here:

Bell: Bell Mail's Anti-spoofing functionality

Webmail is not a solution I want to use.

They suggest that you could use your "other provider's" (or hosting company's) SMTP servers, but they fail to mention that they block outbound port 25 to everywhere except the Bell SMTP servers. And of course my hosting provider doesn't provide an SSL-based SMTP server which would get around the port blocking issue. I guess I will need to switch hosting companies ... sigh. Or switch Bell. That might be the better answer. They keep jacking up their prices every 6 to 12 months, and my connection has become very slow and unstable the last few weeks. (/end rant)

Thanks for that interesting bit of info leth (and welcome to the forum)!

Sounds like Bell is really dropping the bell--er, ball here. Hopefully, production24fps.com has its own SMTP server which you (the OP) can use instead of the Sympatico one. If not, there might be public SMTP servers available for use.

So that's why a tech from Bell told me a couple of months ago that he was aware of the issue....thing is though he also told me that it would be resolve 3-4 weeks later...I guess he was just rubbing me off.

Yes my hosting guys can provide me with their SMTP but that doesn't matter now. Yesterday I check my Gmail account, which I haven't look at in a couple of years. The two things that were missing are now standard, first is the ability to have an HTML signature and second, to be able to configure a third party account and still be able to send emails under that name instead of the Gmail address.

So goodbye TB, we had a good run but now I migrated to Gmail, it's a good thing since i'll be able to access my email from my personal computer too. I will most likely get an Android phone in the coming months so everything will be easily synched.

Thanks for your help!

Phil

That's good to hear. :)

Funny, a few years ago I also said goodbye to Thunderbird and hello to Gmail. Still rollin' with it today - webmail is just so convenient.