With a slightly modified email address to mirror yours, they can easily impersonate you using the personal information provided in the OOO message and exploit your absence. Knowing where you are and how long you may be gone can lead to an attempt to initiate a transfer of funds or access confidential data. They might even go the extra step and reference how great their “trip” is going just to make the message appear genuine.
Regardless of my general health and hygiene over the silly season, I’ll be back in the office on January 2. 15. “Thank you for your consideration during this festive or not-festive time.”

If you are checking emails while you’re out and are responding slower than normal, state that, suggests Jill Gugino Panté, director of the Lerner Career Services Center at the University of Delaware. “If you don’t have access to email and can’t return messages, state that as well,” she says. “The clearer you are in your messaging, the better.”
Smugness: it’s almost impossible to dodge in an OOO. London-based poet Rishi Dastidar, whose debut collection Ticker-Tape is billed as a “maximalist take on 21st Century living”, embraces this and lets his inner show-off have free rein by penning poems for his OOOs. “Yes, the tone of these poems is a little self-satisfied – but if you have to tell colleagues you are away, why not try and do it with a little style and pizzaz?” he points out, adding that it’s also one of the few mediums where you’re guaranteed an audience. Here’s how he explained he was away in France: