i have some email addresses for various web addresses for my business web site and i just noticed that when sending an email to one of these, mac mail is showing my name in the To box.
does anyone know where this gets pulled from so i can change it? i am not seeing it in the preferences for some reason.
thanks.
Ah, yes, that's Apple being ever so helpful and not very privacy or security conscious.
One bascially shouldn't be entering any real personal information into a Mac when it's setup, as Apple puts your name on everything, the network, the emails, the account name and god knows where else.
All I can suggest is you create another user account with no personal information, or a nickname or something other than your real information and use that.
If you want to be more secure, like for a laptop in wifi locations, then you'll have to backup files and erase and reinstall OS X, use a alias for everything, not your real name in anything, especially Address Book.
hotwheels 22 wrote:
what is implied when you say "if you want to be more secure...?
In your personal security if you don't your name broadcasted to everyone and everything then you use a alias when setting up a new computer, after all it can't use what it doesn't know.
Your really never anonymous when using any smart electronic device, all you can do with computers still (but rapidly shrinking) is control who has access to personal information about you.
With smartphones and iOS devices you have just about zero control unless you jailbreak it.
There are people like celebrities, executives and wealthy folks who try to lead normal lives and blend in with everyone else, they are having a very difficult time with technology because it's revealing information, broadcasting signals or other things to be all so helpful, but risking one's personal security in the process.
In fact the president of the U.S. doesn't allow his daughters to use any devices.
Read through this user tip, there are some scary personal privacy informative/ links at the bottom
awesome help. yikes. this is sort of really kind of scary.
you are saying that i would need to set up a new User Account and - wait, let's see, - with the new user account i could access all my installed software etcetera? all my personal mac info and all my settings? this all gets me uber confused and i have spent years customizing this setup (with a lot of help...) to get to this point.
where is it pulling this from? i think i had this issue with with a goofy User Account Image that i was seeing in Mail and someone was telling me that it didn't get sent out with my email it was just for mail to identify me?
your info looks /great/ and i have printed it out and will read it closely tomorrow. but can you just help me a bit more here? for instance, what is implied when you say "if you want to be more secure...?
Mail will use whatever name has been set in the Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Account Information tab, so if there isn't anything in the Full Name text field there won't be anything sent. Also note that if the Use Smart Addresses option is set in the viewing preferences, names from your address book will be used for the email addresses when viewing the messages, but this doesn't mean that your name (or whatever is in your address book entry) is being sent.
hey. thank you. very helpful.
i sometimes get totally clutched when it comes to gathering all of this up and smoothing it out.
i have checked the two settings you recommend and have both turned off the checkmark on Use Smart Addresses and taken a look in the FULL NAME section of the IMAP account under Mail > Preferences > Accounts.
some follow ups please.
1. what was the unchecking of this smart address box doing exactly? i always find it really annoying to have to click in the little bubble for the name to extract a real email address from the TO entry since mail seems to automatically autocomplete here.
2. i am /not/ seeing data in the FULL NAME area of the IMAP account I had this issue with. I am seeing very generic info here (such as "some email account") under the IMAP email account for the domain I was seeing my /personal/ first and last name. i mean, i will have to track this closer but this account was definitely showing up with my personal info and the domain does not have this in the domain name either before or after the @ symbol and i am not seeing anything in the account settings that shows this. i checked Mailbox Behaviors and I checked Advanced and it seems like it may be pulling info from somewhere else? i find this really sort of disconcertng and it feels really un-mac like to me.
3. can i PLEASE ask you to remind me how I get my previously saved ADDRESS BOOKS into Mac Mail without (hopefully) polluting my MAC ADDRESS BOOK that I use for all my phone numbers? I mean, i feel like I am on a forced march here in trying to get all my data together over here and once in awhile I try to fix some of these issues a little more. for instance, i think i have LDIF or similar data from my PREVIOUS email handler and I am noticing that Mac Mail is not autocompleting - so I have to open my old email client, copy and paste the data into the Mac Mail To box and then i think it accepts this email address. But obviously going one by one like this is really tedious.
> Is there a way to get this into Mac mail in one big "swoop" without getting them all mixed up with my very obsessively organized telephone numbers that I access on my iPhone?
THANKS.
hi d.
thanks for the link. this info is pretty fantastic. i have a question and a suggestion (or really a question and a question).
i was a bit confused about the order and the titles and the numbering. i mean, it wasn't until i got to about page 7 that i really realized there were sections in here for easy medium difficulty and difficult (even though I know this was stated in the text pretty early) but i also found it confusing to have this somehow divided up into thematic sections (in some areas) and difficulty sections in others? at some points I was reading what seemed like a sub-heading and i was having a hard time figuring out what heading it belonged under. i mean, i know i was probably simply just totally botched in my reading or i was not thinking very good early in the morning but for me it seems like it would be simpler to sort the items by FUNCTION and then number the item with a E, M or H for easy medium or hard. i know that is a total simplification that won't work but it seemed like I would get more out of this if there was a slight tweak to the order. i found the 1 - X numbering to get confusing and then because there is so much good info and some is rather technical i got a little lost which was sort of frustrating knowing how important and well thought out the info is (apologies if I am totally off the mark here).
also - can you help me a bit with this NEW USER ACCOUNT issue? i think i read the important section you recommend and I am actually looking into Tor primarily because I am on another newsgroup that i need to access and it has started to get to the point where it is a cross between an unsupervised fifth grade math class, Lord of the Flies and some kind of Kony youth group recreational activity.
i mean, can i go totally Gene Hackman Enemy of the State with this in some way? i am getting really tired of all this kindergarten stuff on some of the other forums i have to work on. wish everyone had a mission statement like they do on the mac boards and a dash of adult supervision when it very, very, very rarely becomes necessary...
THANKS.
1. Using the smart address option will use a matching name from your Address Book contacts, so that you will see that instead of just the email address.
2. Your email address will also include whatever is in the Full Name field, which may be your name depending on how Mail was originally set up. If there isn't anything in there, you will just see some dimmed placeholder text.
I remember seeing my name on some random spam and wondering where they got it from, since I don't normally use anything in the Full Name field - I wound up changing my address book entry to an asterisk or something so that I could tell when Mail was just filling in the blanks. You can also look at the raw source to see what is actually in the message headers.
3. The address panel in Mail is the same as what is in your Address Book. Mail will use your current Address Book in addition to previous recipients for the auto-completion. There is an option to add previous recipients to your Address Book, but it doesn't look like there is handy way to just import into the previous recipients.
thank you. such a pleasure to get consistently excellent help.
so - please correct me if i am wrong:
i have no identifying information in the FULL NAME section of my mac mail Accounts Preferences, however I do seem to have two address book entries in a "REWARD IF FOUND" Group in Address book. BOTH of these have the logo for my USER ACCOUNT - <looking in User Accounts> - OK god this is complicated.
So i have one Address Book Entry in this "reward" GROUP that has my HOME ACCOUNT LOG and /all/ my identifying information and I have another Address Book Entry that has just my mobile me ACCOUNT ADDRESS and which is appended with "(AIM)". and it appears that MAIL is pulling the FULL NAME (with my first name and my last name) from my USER ACCOUNT and pulling the ICON from that USER ACCOUNT and using these two pieces of info to identify me - it is identifying me with these two pieces internally and /externally/ apparently?
i mean, people that receive email from this email account which has a domain that does not identify me and from which I am emailing for an account where i have not entered personal data but Mac or Mac Mail has decided that it would be helpful to identify me to others who receive email from this account which is specifically not in my name in any way, is that right??
If there isn't any personal information you have set in the particular Mail account, nothing is sent in your email. It just gets confusing because Mail can pull information from your Address Book in order to make the messages look "better" in your viewer. You can confirm exactly what is being sent to others by sending yourself an email and looking at the raw source.
oh crimeny.
/sorry/ i missed this nice reply and this link.
more food to digest here.
thanks for the nutritious links.
and regards.
4th paragraph: ...HOME ACCOUNT LOGO, not home account "log". the logo from my user account seems to autocomplete in address book and in mac mail...
In
Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Full Name
just type in your actual email address for that account. Then your emails will show up like this:
why does mail show my name on all addresses?
