I haven’t been able to find any information about this online, so I’m posting it here.
I’ve been receiving emails TO addresses like @icloud.com.
I’ve checked all my hide-my-email aliases (including the archived ones) and I don’t own these addresses so I cannot disable them.
I’m wondering if anyone else has run into this issue?
If you are responding to spam mails in an attempt to stop them, you are informing the sender that someone is looking at the mails. The best option is to block the sender if the mails are repeated and stick the mail in your spam folder. There is no point in blocking mails that will only arrive one time. Adding mails to the spam folder informs your ISP that it is spam. Some ISPs are proactive with spam accounts and block them at the server.
An email message can include a tracking pixel that informs the sender the message was read. Just opening a message is usually enough to trigger it, unless your mail client blocks loading external content bu default.
You should never download pictures from unknown sources. It is relatively easy to hide viral code in some picture formats.
So I’m using the default (apple) mail client. But normally, routed through private relay. I think it opens all emails and loads all content from an apple server, then forwards the content. That should trigger tracking pixels, even when I don’t open emails.
Yeah, definitely not replying. They go straight to the junk/spam folder ;)