[Big Fat Octopus]

Hi,

I think my emails are being redirected without my authority by my former employer. I send an email to myself from various addresses and never get them. However I can still log into webmail and my POP password still works in Entourage for the account in question yet there is still no email there to retrieve. So, does anyone know a command for Terminal (or some other app) to discover any aliases or redirections for an email address?

It would be nice to know where my mail is really going to.

Thanks in advance.

[Tomchu]

If it's being redirected, it's being redirected by the receiving SMTP server -- not anywhere on your machine. Terminal won't help you, unless you were a server administrator for this company, and know the SSH login to their mail server. :-P

[CatOne]

I don't get it. Why shouldn't your "former" employer be able to do whatever they want with email that goes to your former email address? They may well want to redirect it to your old manager, or to whoever replaced you, to ensure business continuity.

How do you know or suspect they're being redirected? Why are you even accessing emails at your old place of work? In many cases, in the US at least, this could in fact be illegal.

[Big Fat Octopus]

Originally Posted by CatOne 

I don't get it. Why shouldn't your "former" employer be able to do whatever they want with email that goes to your former email address? They may well want to redirect it to your old manager, or to whoever replaced you, to ensure business continuity.

How do you know or suspect they're being redirected? Why are you even accessing emails at your old place of work? In many cases, in the US at least, this could in fact be illegal.

Many thanks to Tomchu for your first comment indicating it is not possible. I do not have any admin access .... sigh.

Thanks also for your reply CatOne. Not an answer to my question but an interesting observation nonetheless. A couple of points may answer your questions.

1. I suspect they are being redirected... well for the reason stated in the post, but to expand on this - I can send emails to this email address from multiple sources and they do not get returned or rejected to the sender (all senders are from different domains). I can still check this POP mail account without a password error and I can still access webmail for this account but in both circumstances no new emails have arrived for over a week.

2. My "former" employer is not entitled to do whatever they want with this address. I am paying this former employer (an ISP) to use their retail DSL and the email address in question. The address is in the form of myname@my_isp.com. It is now considered a private address. I was using it with their full knowledge for more than 6mths since leaving. I am not the first former employee to keep their work email address for personal use. If they want it back then they only need to ask and I'll take my business elsewhere.

3. The former employer is in breach of the Australian privacy act if they are redirecting my email address without notification. They have failed to return my calls (as a paying customer) on the subject which also puts them at odds with the Industry Code of Practice and in line for fines by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

Hope that answers your questions.

I just want to know if there is a way to trace where the email goes. Traceroute doesnt work for email addresses like it does for domains and I don't know enough commands to go any further. I was hoping some guru would tell me a way to do it. Can't be done according to Tomchu.

[Cold Warrior]

First, log in to your account via webmail and make sure you don't have it configured to forward that email to another account.

Second, did you configure a work account or another email account (like gmail) to auto-check this account?

How to see if someone else is reading it: send it to yourself again, but this time embed an invisible 1x1 pixel image linked to a web server or your home computer. Then check the log to see the picture was accessed or loaded. That will tell you the IP the access came from. This assumes they have HTTP email loaded and configured to load remote images automatically (or that they always click OK when prompted).

Another way is to write up the email from a random but business-like email address so that it sounds like very important business but not spam. Then in the body of the email give them a web address to click or email to reply to. Check the server logs for web page hits or wait on an email.

[Big Fat Octopus]

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior 

First, log in to your account via webmail and make sure you don't have it configured to forward that email to another account.

Second, did you configure a work account or another email account (like gmail) to auto-check this account?

No it is not configured to forward anywhere and nothing is auto-checking the account.

Your other ideas are very creative and appreciated.

Thankyou.

[Chuckit]

Why don't you just call your ISP's tech support line if you're supposed to be able to use this email address?

[besson3c]

Why don't you PGP encrypt all of your messages so that they have absolutely no value to anybody but yourself?