up vote 2 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I've been receiving email from a company, but they claim I'm not on any of their email lists and that it must be getting forwarded by one of their clients.

How can I determine whether or not the email is being sent to me directly or not?

I've submitted the headers to spamcop, and according to that it's coming directly from the sender.

link|improve this question
66% accept rate
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Looking at the headers, you should be able to tell every mail server the message touched. For example:

Delivered-To: ericjln@gmail.com
Received: by 10.239.137.15 with SMTP id j15cs159695hbj; Mon, 1 Feb 2010 07:57:34 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.224.83.85 with SMTP id e21mr2070265qal.227.1265039847481; Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:57:27 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path:
Received: from bmsmail5.ieee.org (bmsmail5.ieee.org [140.98.193.25]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 7si11544910qyk.54.2010.02.01.07.57.26; Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:57:27 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 140.98.193.25 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of SEMA-CR--X4OZK@bmsmail2.ieee.org) client-ip=140.98.193.25;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 140.98.193.25 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of SEMA-CR-1-IX4OZK@bmsmail2.ieee.org) smtp.mail=SEMA-CR-1-IX4OZK@bmsmail2.ieee.org Received: from sbnaom1.ieee-res.ieee.org (dct1-lb-191-papp1.ieee.org [140.98.191.254]) by bmsmail5.ieee.org (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id o11FrAg1003597 for ; Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:57:24 -0500
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:57:24 -0500

Follow the Received lines. We can see the message bounced around some internal google servers (10.239.137.15 and 10.224.83.85), that google got the message from bmsmail5.ieee.org [140.98.193.25], but that the first smtp server to send the message was dct1-lb-191-papp1.ieee.org [140.98.191.254]

link|improve this answer
but if there was a server-based redirect, would it simply add another Received: line? I wouldn't think so, and the headers show the same sort of path - received from yahoo, including the sender's account and ip; then on to google, then a couple of internal google addresses. Yet the sender claims he is absolutely not sending to my email address. – chris Feb 4 '10 at 22:43
I'm pretty sure that the Received line is added by the receiver. So unless the sender has hacked google, you can be confident that the input to google (in this example bmsmail5.ieee.org) is accurate. The stuff before that interaction might have been spoofed. – pcapademic Feb 5 '10 at 19:30
feedback
up vote 0 down vote 
Saturday, 19 November, 2011 3:12 PM
From krishna Krishna Sat Nov 19 20:42:01 2011
X-YMail-OSG:   kW2KDZ4VM1mzYdxq9JQbvzb8abDRNVVNczQdetCl8jkyi5A s5_ZXBC5T3LJ6KnSc98jiOmu.36bRmddvhGJaDN6TylsQNxIiR1nSUphPJ4X mAsrWBxkrhdcV_rSdMKd8ZF5tQr8Y1SWoh6EmtRguze7zZ2Ss20JS9GlbuR4 yy0NY2IOdsC4825bj6VUujKGIiPMWpNLIEd7QCJiyyRWjoytWBs07clUxR89 jVpJWCMFRAOd3w5PdJTOmxMUwqgw19JlJr.aVLc2pOexdh.vXaLZ_Pp_JsKB mLxF5JDm7imXjIf3pk1OTYxmboxNvDozcvt3ihoXA4W5uzphQrV_l_u.nCqe f2PjHY.Lm0wHqtUrC4k6b 
Received:   from [134.159.168.105] by web137619.mail.in.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sat, 19 Nov 2011 20:42:01 IST 
X-Mailer:   YahooMailClassic/15.0.4 YahooMailWebService/0.8.115.325013 
Message-ID:   <1321715521.81899.YahooMailClassic@web137619.mail.in.yahoo.com> 
Date:   Sat, 19 Nov 2011 20:42:01 +0530 (IST) 
From:   krishna Krishna <krishnamanda05@yahoo.in>  
Add sender to Contacts 
Subject:   Hi
To: XYZ@hotmail.com ( Removed for security reason )
MIME-Version:   1.0 
Content-Type:   text/plain; charset=utf-8 
Content-Transfer-Encoding:   quoted-printable 
Content-Length:   1642

Even i am not sure whether the mail that has been sent actually recieved by the recipient.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.