Email sending auto replies

Question

Why is my email sending out auto replies to EVERY email I receive and how do I turn this off? I recently bought a new iPad and set up my email account on it, now whenever I receive an email it is automatically sending a response to every email I receive. There isn't even anything in the file, it's just a reply with my signature on it. Could this be because I have to many devices connected to the same email account? I can't think of any other reason as to why this would be happening as I have never had this problem before when configuring new devices... Any help would be magical!

Answer 1

You're welcome.
Yes, but would it cause massive duplicates?
It all depends on how the rules are defined. The following scenario seems likely in your case. When the first message arrives, both an auto-reply is generated and the message is redirected to the .Mac account. The redirected message is received in the .Mac account and, hence, treated as just another incoming message, i.e. processed by all the rules. Since redirecting preserves the headers, it's treated in the same way as the first one, i.e. both a new auto-reply is generated and the message is redirected again...
If I have setup a 'reply' rule, then that shouldn't
cause any duplicates, right? It should simply reply
to the sender with my stock message.
Right.
Why it would send duplicates
It doesn't. It's the redirect rule that creates the new copy and sends it to yourself.
Maybe it's continuing to apply the rule as it sits in the Inbox?
No, it doesn't do that. The rule is applied to the new message that is received in your .Mac account because of the redirect rule.
Is there a way to tell it to only apply the rule once?
That's how it works. Rules are applied automatically to incoming messages only, not to already received messages, even if they are in the Inbox.
The redirect rule doesn't seem to theorectically
cause duplicates either.
Sure it does.
It should simply redirect
the email to my .Mac account, once.
In order to do so, it must create a new message, just like when forwarding. And yes, it does so once... for each incoming message...
Maybe I need to setup a rule saying [...]
Instead of (or in addition to) processing messages based on the address they're being sent to, process them based on the account that receives them.