Email rec'd direct from Wikitree

Question

I received this message this morning directly to my home email account:.  This is indeed my family. The sender'semail  address is undeliverable.  How does this happen?

The following was sent via the private messaging system on WikiTree.com.

hi there im married to williamlove who is a direct descendant of michel love who married jean fleming in 1803 in dreghorn, i would be interested in chatting with you and comparing thanks

The sender, angela love (angela_love_@outlook.co.uk), was not logged-in to WikiTree. If the message looks like bulk e-mail spam, please forward it to info@wikitree.com right away.

The sender was on this profile page when they sent the message: http://www.WikiTree.com/wiki/Fleming-2147

Answer 1

Without gettting all technical...

The e-mail was generated from a wikitree address that does not accept incoming emails such as noreply@wikitree.com Attempting to 'reply' will result in the message being undeliverable.

This is how any message from the "private message' button, or responses to G2G questions are all sent from within wikitree.

It sounds like this is an actual person who may be connected to you. If you choose to reply you should send your response directly to the address angel_love_@outlook.co.uk which is mentioned in the e-mail.

Comments

To add a basic technical comment...

Wikitree ***could*** send the email and specify a "reply-to" address in the MIME headers (the techncial gobbledy-gook of the e-mail addressing and delivery information) so that when you clicked "reply" in your e-mail program, your e-mail would already be addressed to the correct person.

Doing this however creates a major problem because many spam filters would stop such an e-mail from being delivered (or file it into a spam folder) because the reply-to address is not in the same domain (i.e. outlook.co.uk vs wikitree.com) as the address the e-mail is 'from'. This is because it us an exceedingly common tactic used by spammers.

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Thanks for the reply but that is the issue, I replied immediately to angel_love_@outlook.co.uk

And the message is returned:

The following message to <angela_love_@outlook.co.uk> was undeliverable.

The reason for the problem:

5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 User unknown'

So that is the dilemma, to contact her is impossible through the link supplied on the original Wiki message

Linda

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OK...

outlook.co.uk is a company called the Outlook Creative Group. This page of staff has no Angela: http://www.outlookliveevents.co.uk/Default.aspx?PageID=5

Also their emails appear to be name@outlook.co.uk, no surnames...

Since hotmail.co.uk is now outlook.com, perhaps you might try a polite e-mail to angela_love_@outlook.com or angela_love_@hotmail.co.uk and ask if they had tried to contact someone on wikitree. I could see someone accustomed to typing .co.uk making that typo.

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Mmm... I have a completely different experience. Whenever I receive a private message via Wikitree to my email, I simply have to reply to it, and my response goes to the email address provided. I.e., Wikitree *is* generating a Reply-to already. This only works with private messages, not with messages posted to a profile.

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Hi Rob,  Thanks for the quick reply.  OK I  have sent a note to Angela via outlook.com as well as hotmail.co.uk.   The outlook.com address has bounced but the hotmail address has not so far.    Will see what happens.  Thanks again. Keeping my fingers crossed as the contacts for this line of my family have been as scarce as hen's teeth!

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Jillaine, thanks for the comment.  I imagined that it would have been a similair experience as it is with a private message from Facebook for example.  But not so in this case.