No Offense to Jon Curtis intended, whose efforts are close to superhuman. I got to 126 looped messages, did anyone do better ?
I did warn my constituenct against the use of automated messages and received one good explanatory reply, that I share below. Vic >>> "Victor L. Boersma" <[email protected]> 08/16/98 10:01am >>> Warning against the use of Automated Responses. Many people these days make use of facilities in their programmes to generate automated responses to email messages. (a) Usually the recipients do not need to know that you are on vacation but want to see action on the part of your organization. Therefore, have someone read your email and respond with useful action. (Being on vacation is not an accepted excuse for inaction this age). (b) Many people subscribe to reflector services that are not equipped to deal with such messages. This causes a dangerous and growing strain on the Internet. If you subscribe to any reflector services be VERY careful using, or preferably, do not use anything that sends automated messages. They don't help but can hinder. Have a human interface. Vic One response: Vic this is a recurring problem, not as much caused by people who use the Email auto-respond feature, but by ill-advised MIS groups who set up the return for a reflected msg to be the Reflector ID itself. IT SHOULD NEVER BE THE REFLECTOR ID. Thus, the auto-respond msg hits the reflector, send the msg to the whole list (including the auto-responder) and the endless loop begins. BECAUSE there are poorly designed MIS Reflectors, people need to be careful about using auto-responds as your email advises. You can also set up screens on in-bound gateways to screen some of these multiple msgs I believe or use a RULE in your Email program to treat the symptom of the MIS Luddite, but that does not treat the root cause. Many MIS systems screen multiple hop msgs and other types of junk mail on the NET. PS As one who works multiple time zones and strange hours, all the time, I agree with your VACATION comment.
