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Question -
Is it legal for one email service provider to send emails using the exact identical email address of another email service provider?

  • This happened to me in the last 3 days. The two companies are not connected.
  • I have an email account with company A, and used it to make an account with company B, and when I tried the email service of company B it uses the completely identical email address as my account with company A.
  • I have replicated the problem (with company B) by using a 2nd account from company A.

More Detail - Outlook.com apparently can send emails using gmail addresses, if you go through the steps. However, what about if you have no Microsoft accounts at all, then, you use your gmail address to make a Skype account, it may involve a verification code being sent to your gmail address. Then you decide to use your open Skype account to sign in to Outlook.com for the first time ever, and suddenly you notice that Outlook.com uses your gmail address to send emails, without you having in any way given any types of permissions to do anything like that.

phoog
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1 Answers1

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As people realize time and again in the fight against spam and scam, the email protocol is not secure. One can write anything into the "From" or "Reply-To" field. But that's for sending. To receive mail, the technical address has to be resolved.

An email address can consist of two parts, the optional display name and the actual address. Say Alice registers "Alice and Bob" <alice@example.test> and Bob registers "Alice and Bob" <bob@other.sample>. Those are different emails. One gets resolved at example in the test top level domain, the other gets resolved at other in the sample top level domain.

If two different companies can operate mailboxes with the same actual address, someone has "broken the internet" in a rather serious way, either locally on your network or globally. I do not think the internet is broken that way.

Which leaves the problem of identical display names. If the display name is trademarked or copyrighted, there could be problems, depending on details of the jurisdiction. It is usually not possible to copyright a personal name. There could also be questions of fraud. But those do not apply if the same person uses identical display names on different systems.

o.m.
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