Mail Quota Warning

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Hello folks,

I've had this email message to my POP account mailbox, one per day for the last ten days. Has anyone else had similar?
It looks like a scam so I've been deleting them.

Screen Shot 2014-03-13 at 15.29.46.png
 
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No, not a scam. There's no phony link for you to click or website to visit. It's just a heads up from your email provider that you have reached your limit, along with instructions on what to do to recover some space using the email settings you set yourself in your own email software.
 

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Do you recognize the e-mail address that this e-mail was sent from? Is it from an e-mail provider that you currently have an account with?

- Nick
 

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I agree with member "lifeisabeach" that it's not a scam. The warning is coming from your email provider (ISP). It may be the limits you set or that your ISP has set which have been exceeded.
 

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If you are using POP, do you have the "leave message on server" option checked? If so, you have copies of every email on your local machine and on the server as well..

So one option is to disable that feature and keep only local copies, the other is to switch over to IMAP if that's available so that you can keep the local and server side in sync with each other..
 
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Do you recognize the e-mail address that this e-mail was sent from? Is it from an e-mail provider that you currently have an account with?

- Nick

Hi Nick,

That's the problem. There is no way of telling who it's from. As you can see the mail is not headed or signed by my provider and clicking on the 'Mail Delivery System' or 'E-mail User' drop downs reveals nothing.

The thing is I do delete messages on a regular basis, and even lost the lot recently when I had the Mavericks install fail...so for the first time ever in all the 10 years I've been with this provider I get these emails every day.

The box in the account preferences 'Remove copy from server after retrieving....' is unchecked. This may be default from when I did the clean install...in which case I'm going to go with the instructions unless you see anything suspicious.

chscag,lifeisabeach,Raz0rEdge, thank you very much also for your input.
 

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That's the problem. There is no way of telling who it's from. As you can see the mail is not headed or signed by my provider and clicking on the 'Mail Delivery System' or 'E-mail User' drop downs reveals nothing.

Yes...I can see how that would be confusing. But also not very helpful from the account owners standpoint (you in this case). If someone has multiple e-mail accounts (Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc.)...then the user would not know what e-mail provider this message is coming from.

Can you compose a "reply" to this e-mail message (click the reply button)? The "reply message" (if possible to make) should show the senders e-mail address.

WARNING...I'm not saying to actually send a reply to this message. I'm just saying to make a "test" reply to see if the sender's e-mail address shows up. If the sender's e-mail address does show up...then you will know where it came from (and you will know if it's a scam or genuine).

If it doesn't show up...then the confusion continues (but still could be from a legitimate e-mail account of yours). But if you have multiple accounts...you still won't know which account it is from.

- Nick
 
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If it doesn't show up...then the confusion continues (but still could be from a legitimate e-mail account of yours). But if you have multiple accounts...you still won't know which account it is from.

- Nick

Hello Nick,
Thanks for your message. Yes...I just tried this and all Mail does is want to reply to 'Mail Delivery System:;'....there are no email extensions or anything. Interestingly I highlighted/copied the address and it won't paste into this response. How very odd.
 
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With that message opened up in a window by itself, go to the menu and select the following:

View » Message » All Headers

Or simply press SHIFT-CMD-H

From here, you should be able to discern what the originating server may have been. For example, here are some sample headers I have for an email from Amazon:

Code:
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
X-Original-Messageid: <urn.correios.msg.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.rte-svc-onebox-na-1a-i-11a5c06d.us-east-1.amazon.com>

Note that I replaced long strings of numbers with the "x" character instead.

There are various others that reference mac.com and my .me email address, which indicate who the recipient was and the name of the receiving email server. The examples listed above should indicate what servers the email originated from, and thus clue you in as to who sent them. If it came from your email provider to the email address you have with that provider, then the domains should mostly be identical, barring cases like Apple where they have multiple domains available to the same user (.mac, .me, .icloud).
 

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Thanks for your message. Yes...I just tried this and all Mail does is want to reply to 'Mail Delivery System:;'....there are no email extensions or anything. Interestingly I highlighted/copied the address and it won't paste into this response. How very odd.

Seems sort of strange to me. This may be a totally legitimate message from an e-mail provider...but it seems very unprofessional or amateur.

Without a return e-mail address or at least a reference from who it is from in the body of the message...how is someone to know what e-mail provider it is from (if someone has multiple accounts).

I'm thinking...given that there are no links in the message & no return e-mail address...it's probably not a scammer of any sort. These guys WANT you to be able to contact them...so they can run their scam on you (or at least "phish" for your e-mail address).

- Nick
 

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One more thought. Since the Apple "Mail" program has flagged this e-mail message as "junk". There's usually a button that you can click on in the mail window that says "Not Junk". If you do this...does anything change (any additional info exposed)?

- Nick
 
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How many messages are actually in the Inbox?
 
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Hello again, just keeping you all posted.

I've had no further mail quota warnings since I checked 'Remove copy from server after retrieving..' in Mail preferences. It warned me that the action would delete all messages on the server and I went for it. So it appears legitimate but at the same time as Nick suggest unprofessional.

Sorry I couldn't reply to all of you....I never did get the hang of this multi quote thing.

Cheers,
Liam
 

chscag

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So it appears legitimate but at the same time as Nick suggest unprofessional.

I wouldn't go so far as calling it "unprofessional" but there is a danger of permanently losing a message if you should inadvertently delete it from your Mac. Allowing messages to remain on the server (if the ISP allows a large quota) provides backup.
 
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I wouldn't go so far as calling it "unprofessional" but there is a danger of permanently losing a message if you should inadvertently delete it from your Mac. Allowing messages to remain on the server (if the ISP allows a large quota) provides backup.

Sorry there I have to disagree. I just worked out that I've punted £2040 GBP or $3395 USD at my ISP to provide broadband/email (POP) over the last ten years and that message is the best that they can do? It looked like a phish but turned out to be lazy comms from a company who can't even be bothered to acknowledge the Mac user never mind the poor detail. But hey..I'm probably being a bit precious.

I understand about the permanent deletion because I just did it to clear the decks so to speak. I'm not particularly fussed about keeping emails in the client...if it's really important I drag and drop them somewhere else.
 

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