One of the official email addresses of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) was spoofed on Thursday, August 23, sending a message to Rappler’s chief executive officer Maria Ressa cursing her and calling her a “dilawan”. 

Spoofing is a term used to refer to a person or group that uses a fake mailer program to make it appear as if another e-mail address was used to send a certain message.

At 3:28 pm on Thursday, Vice President Leni Robredo’s email address vp@ovp.gov.ph sent a message to Ressa, which goes, “Fuck you Dilawans :D.”

“Dilaw” or yellow is the color of Robredo’s political party, the Liberal Party. Propagandists and supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte have been using “dilawans” as a derogatory term for his critics. (READ: On ‘dilawan’ tag, Aquino says listen to message before looking at color)

Ressa immediately suspected the OVP’s email address was somehow hacked and consulted with Rappler’s Tech team.

It turns out that the email sender used the fake mailer Emkei.cz to send the message to Ressa. 

Robredo’s spokesperson Barry Gutierrez denied any staff members of the OVP sent the message to Ressa. Like Rappler’s findings, Gutierrez said they suspected email spoofing was used by the sender.

“It does not appear that the account was hacked. The account and server were checked and no such email was sent. From initial indications, what Maria received may have been a spoofed email,” said Gutierrez in a text message. 

He said the OVP is currently investigating the matter.  

“It goes without saying, of course, that the OVP would never send such a message in the first place. Thank you for giving us the heads up,” he said. – Rappler.com