Email being delivered to wrong mailbox

[caztektips]

Hi, I am experiencing a problem with our Exchange 5.5 server, where some users are occassionally receiving mail not intended for them but for a user with a similar email address.

For example: gwhats@microsoft.com receives mail for gwhits@microsoft.com

it has also happened where only the 1st two letters of the mail alias are the same

ie. pmarshall@microsoft.com would receive mail addressed to pmcdonald@microsoft.com

If any one has any ideas what could be causing this it would be a great help.

Thanks

 

[SimonDavis]

Could it be their aliases are confusing someone?

What is your email address convention - mine is a small co so we just use initials - but there are a couple of duplications.

Are they actually being wrongly delivered - that is to say is pmarshall really receiving mail addressed to pmacdonald, or is the sender wrongly addressing it to pm@microsoft.com?

 

[caztektips]

Simon

our addressing convention is first initial surname ie john smith would be jsmith@microsoft.com

The emails are actually being delivered to the wrong address, but it is not all the time either. that is to say that an email addressed to pmacdonald is going to pmarshall. It is as if the MTA is only looking at part of the mail address when delivering it.

 

[DestinysDream]

Are these emails from within your organization or from outside?

If anyone calls and says "I know a little something about computers" just tell them to reformat it.

 

[caztektips]

It is happening with external emails

 

[DestinysDream]

In the email that are being received to the wrong person are they from financial organizations and are there pictures within the emails.

If anyone calls and says "I know a little something about computers" just tell them to reformat it.

 

[jdeaner]

Sounds like an account creation problem with inconsistant naming conventions. Occasionally we have email delivered to people not addressed to (and not BCC'd). This is only with SPAM though and very very rare. There are a ton of techniques to get mail delivered in Exch 5.5 incorrectly. Do you have any email/spam filters? You can verify that the email is being addressed correctly to the user through the full email header. Check all the user mailbox settings in exchange and verify the naming/addressing is conistant in all the tabs. Also, outlook can do some crazy things so check to see if there are any local rules taking precedence over the exch srvr.