[svlug] OT: vacation responses to list mail

Marc MERLIN marc_news at merlins.org
Fri Apr 25 17:46:56 PDT 2003


On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 08:18:25AM +0100, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> I've just received several 'vacation' message responses to mail posted
> to SVLUG.
> 
> If you're going to use an autoresponder, please configure it properly.
> This means setting it up not to respond to non-personal mail (do you
> really want to broadcast to the world that you are out of town for a
> week).  If even a small fraction of a typical mailing list sets up such
> autoresponders, any post to the list is responded to by a flurry of "I'm
> out of the office" messages.  Annoying at the very least, and utterly
> unnecessary.
 
Actually,
1) bounces should go to the envelope sender (the mailing list), not you,
   so those vacation programs are misconfigured to start with (common)
2) They ignore Precedence: list/bulk. That's bad 

Fpr more details
http://marc.merlins.org//netrants/autoresponders.txt
 
> The original offender is added to my local blacklist -- their messages
> are rejected from my inbox.

Please send those to mailman-owner at svlug.org when you get them next,
we'll disable them. Rogue autoresponses are dangerous and are commonly
cause for mailing list loops.

Marc
-- 
"A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R.
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/   |   Finger marc_f at merlins.org for PGP key




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