What’s this email address?

Q I recently received an email purporting to come from Computeractive.

I am on the list for the weekly emails you send, but I would like you to confirm that the email I received – which came from news.xyzabcdefghijklm@newswires.computeractive.co.uk – is actually from Computeractive.

I am puzzled by the strange letters in the ‘Reply to’ address so I do not wish to open this email until I can confirm that it is from an authentic sender.
Alan R Sinden

A You are quite right to check any suspicious emails, and in this case what you have received is authentic.

The ‘newswires’ bit of the ‘reply to’ address is used for the newsletters we send out, and the part at the front with the jumbled-up letters is a unique code we use to track our newsletters and make sure we’re sending them to the right people (the code printed here is a made-up one, not the one we sent Mr Sinden).

If you have a spam or junk email filter, you may wish to add emails that come from the domain ‘newswires.computeractive.co.uk’ to the list of approved messages (the bit at the front may change from week to week so it’s best not to add the whole email address, just the part after the @ sign which won’t change).

It’s certainly a good idea to check these things, particularly with the amount of junk and malicious emails that go around, and don’t open attachments from people you don’t know.

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