what happened ?

[Dee Sa]

I have a pal that I e mail about 3 times a week and she replies, recently her computer gave up the ghost so she is now sharing her partners lap top.
Yesterday on said laptop she recieved an e mail from me dated April5, 2010
which I had sent on that date but she says she has not seen it before.
Where has it been all this time ?

[ChuckFickens]

Impossible to say for sure without knowing a lot more detail.

Here's what I'd guess has happened.

Their ISP gives out an email address in the form of
[email protected]

The ISP will accept emails for
[email protected]

You then have a choice about how the email software can be setup, it can either be setup as [email protected] or just hostname.provider.com

if it's setup the first way they'll only receive emails addressed to the exact name@

If it's setup the second way they'll receive emails addressed to anything@

I'd guess the first computer was setup to only get emails addressed to the exact name@ and the second one has been setup to get emails addressed to anything@ and the email from 2010 had an error in the first part of the address so it didn't exactly match the name@ on the first computer, so it just would have sat waiting on the server for a computer setup to get emails addressed to anything@.

Also, why do people keep putting questions like this in chatterbank, there is a tech section that is a better place to put tech questions.

[excelsior-1]

Still faster than royal mail

[Dee Sa]

thank you both, I asked here because I use this site the most, didnt mean to upset anyone.