--On 20 December 2007 11:39:54 -0800 Jeroen van Aart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Phil (Medway Hosting) wrote: >> It's not "collateral" spam. It's just plain "spam". That's the point I >> would make to the powers that be !! > > It is not spam, because it is neither unsolicited (by emailing someone > you allow them to respond, whether automated or not, I would say) nor > bulk. You shouldn't just call something spam just because you don't like > it: http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html You've missed the point. An OoO reply to a spam message will almost always go to an innocent third party, whose address was used by a spammer. If the spammer has used a single address for a large run of spam, then the owner of the address will typically get hit by thousands of DSN, OoO and other auto-replies. If I send you a message, and I get an auto-reply from you, of course that's not spam. If I get 1000 autoreplies per day, in response to a message that I didn't send, then that's spam. Phil's point about use of the word "collateral" is a good one. It's an abuse of the term, because it implies that the original spam message is hitting an unintended target. That's arguable not true with auto-replies - they're new messages. At best, the victim has been caught in cross-fire, but not by the original spammer. > > The vacation utility on unix seems smart enough to not be a nuissance > and still be functional for those who need it. It can be, if used with caution. You need to have a very good spam filter in front of it. > Regards, > Jeroen -- Ian Eiloart IT Services, University of Sussex x3148 -- ## List details at http://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users ## Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ## Please use the Wiki with this list - http://wiki.exim.org/
