Q: Many thanks for your help in the past, now another puzzler has come up; sometimes (not always) when my niece sends me an email, her address on it is @aim.com when it should be @aol.com. Can you explain what is happening here? It happened just yesterday, 15 Jan, and I clicked on the reply button to draw it to her attention and she got it! I would really like to know how, for in the past I’ve missed a dot out and it came back to me.
A: The address you see displayed on the top of an email is not necessarily the address it was sent from. This is how it’s possible for spammers to spoof a message so that it appears to have come from somewhere else. It’s down to the way the mail client software is configured.
What’s happening here is much simpler though. AIM Mail and AOL Mail are in fact the same thing, being a webmail service provided by AOL. Provided you get the first part of the address right you can use either domain and messages will reach the recipient. The same thing happens with Google Mail, you can use @gmail or @googlemail interchangeably to reach the same person. The reason the address sometimes varies when you receive messages is probably down to your niece using a different computer or signing in via a different Web browser to access her account.
AOL Mail and AIM Mail are the same service so the domains are interchangeable
Originally featured in PCU124
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