Council tampering with emails or other explanation

[outlawlgo]

I hope someone can throw some light on a mystery surrounding an email "read receipt" (Outlook Express) apparently received from a Councillor.

I sent an email to a Councillor, in respect of which a "read receipt" was requested. I initially thought the correspondence reached the Councillor as an email was returned indicating the email was opened. However, on inspecting more closely a different email address to the one it was sent is revealed.

The document below contains the redacted print outs of the emails:

"Email/read receipt"

Essentially the addresses sent to and returned from are as follows:

christina.mcgilligan-fell@nelincs.gov.uk

christina.mcgilliganfell@nelincs.gov.uk

Is it likely the council has intercepted the email and then tampered with it, or, something more innocent?

[Crazy council]

Re: Council tampering with emails or other explanation

Innocent.

The emails to councilors do go direct to them, but they pass through a few email exchanges on there servers, these account for email address changes and slight mistakes to make sure the emails go through the read receipt is probably genuine.

Emails to the leaders and the mayor will go to there PAs

[outlawlgo]

Re: Council tampering with emails or other explanation

If you use your own domain or a paid email service, you can set up email redirection from that email address to any other email address, even more than one. You can set up redirection to your work email.

Here you sent an email to christina.mcgilligan-fell@nelincs.gov.uk and got a receipt from Christina.McGilliganFell@nelincs.gov.uk. Sounds like the email address has just been reformatted, or am I missing something else?

Thanks. I thought possibly there were two addresses (with and without hyphen) and that would explain it. Enquiries have been made about this but the council won't answer, however, it has been confirmed that the official address is with the hyphen.

[outlawlgo]

Re: Council tampering with emails or other explanation

Innocent.

The emails to councilors do go direct to them, but they pass through a few email exchanges on there servers, these account for email address changes and slight mistakes to make sure the emails go through the read receipt is probably genuine.

Emails to the leaders and the mayor will go to there PAs

Thanks. The "read receipt" (sent by council) is not the official address as confirmed by the council. However, It was sent to the official address.

[outlawlgo]

Re: Council tampering with emails or other explanation

Another acknowledgement of opened mail last night.

An email was sent 13 May with the Councillor copied in (both addresses were used belt & braces). Did same on 22 and 31 May.

Additionally, I used the facility offered by MySociety Ltd's "WriteToThem" on 26 May (unknown address).

On 3 June received "read receipt" recorded as opened at 11:33 pm from unofficial address.

From the further 4 times my Councillor was emailed/copied in, I've only one further acknowledgement that the message was opened (to 31 May email).

[Lucifa42]

Re: Council tampering with emails or other explanation

I work in IT, this is very common for people with longer or double barrelled names.
We'll enter both emails, with the hypen and without the hypen, into their email account so emails to either will reach the recipient. One of the addresses will be set as the 'primary' address - that is the one that is used if emails are sent from that account.

By the looks of it, while they are saying the official email is with the hyphen, the primary address set on the server is without.

Also worth noting that the option exists to ask the recipient whether they want to send a read receipt after opening an email, perhaps they have chosen not to send one for some of your emails?