email from dead guy

[techjulie]

One of my users just recieved an email from a gentleman who has been dead for 2 years. It's not a Klez or other address spoofing virus because it specifically references the class he was teaching.
I've heard of emails holds and retrys with a standard 72 hour period but 2 years??
I'm on Exchange 5.5 and the email was sent from an outside ISP (not our on-campus system).
Can anyone think of a reasonable explaination for a long hold time?

Thanks in advance!

-Julie

 

[danvlas]

Maybe the dead guy's computer is used by someone else who (re)sent (by mistake) an email through his email account, which may have been left in place...

I guess a miracle is out of the question, isn't it?


Just a thought...

Daniel Vlas
Systems Consultant
danvlas@yahoo.com

 

[techjulie]

I'm thinking a miracle is probably a low likelihood but who knows? (not to start a theological discussion on this board)

I was thinking that perhaps it got stuck in the outgoing Message Transfer queue, but I'm not sure why some messages get "stuck" in queue. But I thought MTA was mostly for multi-site Exchange transfers rather than from Exchange to outside world.

So another angle on this question is.... why do some messages fail to be delivered in a timely manner? What happens to that 1/100 percent of emails that get lost in the void???

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[Peping]

Open and find out from the mail header which domain it originates or where the message has been relayed. I would suspect this is a virus issue where the address was grabbed from an address book.

Peping

 

[jrjuiliano]

Another possiblity could be that the ISP is purging e-mail, and all queued e-mail was sent out.

I've also seen cases where someone was rebuilding an Exchange server and a ton of older e-mails were sent out after the rebuild for some reason. I guess Exchange didn't recognize they were already sent.

You would think that if someone was trying to contact you from "beyond", they'd use something cooler than e-mail! J.R. Juiliano
Information Systems Specialist
Tri-City Emergency Medical Group

 

[techjulie]

I'm hoping that they would say something more profound than "bring your stuff to class", too !

But that sounds like a reasonable explanation...

Where does Exchange keep the queued e-mail? How can I check it?

Thanks,
-Julie