Why can I still receive email at my old domain after someone else bought it?

Question

My domain expired years ago and was registered by another party.

I have already read Can someone read my E-Mail if I lose ownership of my domain? and see that the answer is yes.

Now if someone buys the domain and creates a mx record pointing to the his own mail server he can read all my confidential emails the people are sending me right?

If they register the domain name, they will receive all email being sent to it from that point on. They will not have retroactive access to previously sent emails. There is nothing to fundamentally prevent this.

However, all my email accounts under that domain are still functioning.

Timeline:

1. domain purchased with website/mail hosting Company X
2. website/mail hosting is transferred to Company Y
3. domain lease from Company X expires
4. domain purchased by Company Z

When I login at Company Y (current website/mail host), the "Domain Manager" section of the control panel shows correctly that the domain's registration expired years ago. However, I can still create a website at that domain through Company Y's website builder. I can visit said site from another browser/device. I also still seem able to use Company Y's control panel to edit the domain's DNS zone file where the MX records are stored -- I thought this should be impossible since the domain is no longer mine.

Are my email accounts still working simply due to the new registrant not changing the MX records? As an aside; how is it possible for me to manage DNS for a domain I don't own? Why am I able to put up a website on a domain that is no longer registered to me?

Answer 1

Are my email accounts still working simply due to the new registrant not changing the MX records?

Most likely.

As an aside; how is it possible for me to manage DNS for a domain I don't own?

If your registrar is minimally professional, no.

Why am I able to put up a website on a domain that is no longer registered to me?

You can put up a domain for nasa.gov if you want. Just create a VirtualHost on Apache, a couple HTML pages saying you are NASA, and you are done.

Easy, right? But don't expect anyone to type www.nasa.gov and end up accessing your server.

Now, on your issue: the new owner of your domain may have acquired the domain and never bothered to change anything: MX records, CNAME, A and AAAA records. So if you create a page and put on the previous server, it will still work, because all addresses are pointing to your original server. But this is not permanent: as soon as the new owner changes the records, your site is not accessible at this domain anymore.