(I typed this up for our user mailinglist, but I guess it's equally valid here -- if not more, given the list's size)
As the holiday season is coming up, I thought I'd kindly ask all of you to take some extra caution when setting up your out-of-office autoresponders: _Please_ make sure that your autoresponders aren't responding to mailing list messages. There are basically three ways of doing this, listed in order of preference: 1. Don't autorespond to messages that do not directly include your address. 2. Don't autorespond to messages that include commonly used mailing list headers. Two good examples are: "Precedence: bulk" "List-Post: <someaddress>" 3. Exclude mailing lists that you know that you are on. This is tricky; in part because you might forget one, or make a typo, or because some mailing lists have aliases that you might not know about (e.g. the securityfocus.com mailing lists are also reachable through "security-focus.com". The "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" list is also reachable through "lists.gnac.com", and at least a year or so ago, through the old address "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", although I don't see _that_ particular variation as often these days :)) Not to mention the fact that some people (inadvertently?) "Bcc:" the mailing list. This is especially important with systems like novell groupwise who autorespond to ALL addresses listed in the headers, including the mailing list itself. >From all of us: Thanking you in advance, /Mikael Olsson (I'm sorry I can't give hands-on advice on how to configure different mail systems to accomplish the above. I myself never set up out-of-office autoresponders :)) -- Mikael Olsson, Clavister AB Storgatan 12, Box 393, SE-891 28 �RNSK�LDSVIK, Sweden Phone: +46 (0)660 29 92 00 Mobile: +46 (0)70 26 222 05 Fax: +46 (0)660 122 50 WWW: http://www.clavister.com "Senex semper diu dormit" _______________________________________________ Firewalls mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] For Account Management (unsubscribe, get/change password, etc) Please go to: http://lists.gnac.net/mailman/listinfo/firewalls
