# Got an out of office reply to an email I did not send



## Brendan Burgess (17 Apr 2014)

I got an out of office reply today from a person I have not emailed in some weeks. My first thought was that my email account had been hacked. 

I thought I might get a raft of emails or calls from people telling me I had sent them spam emails. 

But then someone else told me tonight that they got an out of office reply from someone they had not emailed in 5 years. 

Is there some new virus doing the rounds?


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## amgd28 (17 Apr 2014)

got the same a couple of weeks ago actually..


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## Leo (18 Apr 2014)

Most likely it is someone sending spam email, and spoofing the 'from' address to your email address. It's pretty common, and impossible to stop.

If all spam came from a small number of email addresses, or only compromised mailboxes, it'd be much easier identify and block. The spammers know this, and cycle through huge volumes of email addresses to place in the from field to bypass spam filters.


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## Brendan Burgess (18 Apr 2014)

Hi Leo

Possibly, but it was an out of office reply? There was no spam involved. 

I actually got two from him at the same time to two separate email addresses. 

I have emailed the sender to notify him.

Brendan


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## 1dave123 (18 Apr 2014)

Something similar happened to me several months back when I received acknowledgement emails from the Probate Office.  I hadn't emailed them in years.  

Turned out the problem was at their end.  

It is quite possible that the issue here may be with the other person's account rather than yours. The fact that u got two to different email addresses would suggest this

If he confirms that other people contacted him about the same thing that should confirm it


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## Sue Ellen (18 Apr 2014)

I think I encountered this problem some years ago in work when I set my out of office.  Because there was a problem with the out of office option it set the leaving date a few years back and everyone on my sender's list got an out office notification from me.  It could correspond with the bank holiday week-end.


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## Jim2007 (18 Apr 2014)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Hi Leo
> 
> Possibly, but it was an out of office reply? There was no spam involved.
> 
> ...



This often happens during holidays.  They sent the spam to someone using your email address in the 'from' tag and that person had an out of office message set up.  So you got a genuine reply.


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## NewEdition (18 Apr 2014)

I think some email clients, eg Lotus Notes, hasve a setting that when you set up an out of office, it will notify your contacts.
So if you are in regular contact with this person and you are in their contact list, they may have done this deliberatally.
If you dont know the person, its possible your email address was used to send spam


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## Brendan Burgess (18 Apr 2014)

Jim2007 said:


> This often happens during holidays.  They sent the spam to someone using your email address in the 'from' tag and that person had an out of office message set up.  So you got a genuine reply.



Hi Jim

That sounds a possible explanation. Can I clarify my understanding of it.

1) Someone spammed Johnny using my email address 
2) Johnny had set up an out of office on his email
3) It sent me an out of office reply 

Brendan


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## Jim2007 (18 Apr 2014)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Hi Jim
> 
> That sounds a possible explanation. Can I clarify my understanding of it.
> 
> ...



Got it!


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## DerKaiser (19 Apr 2014)

Sue Ellen said:


> I think I encountered this problem some years ago in work when I set my out of office.  Because there was a problem with the out of office option it set the leaving date a few years back and everyone on my sender's list got an out office notification from me.  It could correspond with the bank holiday week-end.



I've seen this before. Someone sets a date in the past for out of office and if you sent them a mail over that period you now get an out of office reply.


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## Brendan Burgess (19 Apr 2014)

It may be a problem with the date. This is the message I got on 18 April, to an email I did not send



> I will be out of the office starting Wed 02/05/2014 and will not return until Tue 05/06/2014.



I don't know if the 02/05 is 2nd of May or the 5th of February. 

Brendan


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## Sue Ellen (20 Apr 2014)

DerKaiser said:


> I've seen this before. Someone sets a date in the past for out of office and if you sent them a mail over that period you now get an out of office reply.



Because so many people were slagging me about setting the date incorrectly, I checked it and found that I hadn't done so.  Contacted I.T. and they confirmed that it was an intermittent problem that they were having with Lotus Notes at that time.


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## jdwex (20 Apr 2014)

Brendan Burgess said:


> It may be a problem with the date. This is the message I got on 18 April, to an email I did not send
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I'd guess the recipient of the spam is in the US, so 02/05 corresponds to the 5th of February


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## Leo (22 Apr 2014)

Brendan Burgess said:


> It may be a problem with the date. This is the message I got on 18 April, to an email I did not send
> 
> I don't know if the 02/05 is 2nd of May or the 5th of February.
> 
> Brendan



The message is set by the user when they set up the out-of-office auto-reply. The contents of that message are just free-form text, and have no bearing on the operation of the out-of-office functionality.

So a spammer sent an email to this person with your address in the from field. The person had their out-of-office active at the time, and you got the response. Getting two responses to two different email addresses suggests the spammers sent emails using both addresses.


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