I recently started working at a new organization and I'm facing a puzzling situation. We're using Microsoft 365 internally, but we regularly receive emails from external contacts, including contractors using personal Gmail or other webmail accounts, directed to a shared mailbox, like [email protected]. Strangely, a few of these external contacts—about one or two a month—are mistakenly emailing an executive whose email address (formatted fff.lll##@company.com) just happens to have the same starting letter as the shared mailbox. These senders claim that their email autofilled the exec's address while they were typing, but I'm confused about how this could happen since they have no prior communication with the exec. Any thoughts on what could be going on?
1 Answer
In my experience, this often happens on the sender's end. They might have mistakenly created a local contact or their organization might have an external contact set up with the wrong email address linked to the wrong display name. Another possibility is that the executive was CCed on some previous email. When the sender replies, they might just hit 'reply all', delete the previous text, and change the subject line without realizing they're still sending it to the exec.
But the senders are all using private Gmail accounts and are unfamiliar with the executive, so it's puzzling.