UKC

Quick question - I've had a message from a UKC user through the UKC messaging app with this note at the bottom:-

"This message was sent to you using the User Messaging service at https://www.ukclimbing.comby registered user https://www.ukclimbing.com/user/profile.php?id=xxxxxxxx.    The sender does not have your email address and will only get it if you reply."

I've replied to that message, only to receive a message saying "This mailbox is just used as a sender address for user messaging."

I'm sure in the past I could reply/converse with users through the UKC messaging system instead of having to tell them my email and vice versa - has this changed?

I could be mistaken, but don't think that's true.  I think it's always been that the case that the intial contact is via UKC but after that you're just emailing each other.

That was my experience

As far as I'm aware, the UKC messaging has always just set up the option for you and the other user to converse directly by email and you never could have messaged anyone without sharing your own email address. 

It always used to do that by utilising the "reply to" field within email. So if I sent you a message, the email to you would come from [email protected], but the "reply to" field on that email would be set to my email address so that if you hit "reply" within your email client it would email me directly and cut UKC out of the loop entirely.

If your reply has actually gone to the UKC messaging address, I would expect that to return the error you got because your reply should have gone to the user's own email address. The two options I'd suspect would be: 

• The setting of the "reply to" field has gone wrong, either because UKC made a tweak that accidentally broke it or because a provider somewhere along the chain has deliberately blocked it
• Your email client doesn't obey the "reply to" field. You could try accessing by a different route.

I've attached an image of how the process used to look within the standard Android Gmail app. So you can see that the email came to my Hotmail address from UKC, but my replies would go to the user's Gmail address.

Yep, I got an email via UKC from someone who used their full name and said they were a researcher for a certain BBC TV programme. Being a paranoid type I was about to email back asking politely for them to email me again now they had my address from their BBC address, but then noticed that my reply was going to their BBC address! 😄 I did a bit of googling as well and am pretty certain they are exactly who they say they are!

When are you on Question Time, then...?

The 'reply-to' field doesn't exist in the message I had from the other user, so I guess it's been got rid of. I've messaged them on their profile with my email so we can converse directly.