Vacation Bots

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Mon Jul 30 2001 - 09:22:58 PDT

  • Next message: Squire, Jonathan: "RE: Vacation Bots"

    How does the community think I should deal with vacation 'bots?  Every
    once in a while, someone goes on vacation, and uses some kind of
    auto-responder on their mailbox to tell folks that their mail won't be
    read for a while.  Unfortunately, some of these vacation bots (the ones
    from Redmond :-) are not smart enough to distinguish mailing list
    traffic from personally addressed e-mail, and the result is that
    everyone who posts to a large list gets a few pieces of junk in reply.
    
    On LSM, it is not too bad, yet.  I get one or two pieces of junk per
    post.  On Bugtraq, it is a major problem: a post there will draw at
    least a dozen "out of office" replies.  As a result, Bugtraq has a
    policy of immediately and silently shutting down your subscription if
    you are caught with a dumb vacation bot subscribed to Bugtraq.
    
    To date, I have been tolerating it, and occasionally sending a personal
    note when I feel peevish :-)  I'm tempted to go to the Bugtraq policy.
    In between is disabling the offender's subscription, and sending them a
    note telling them how to get back on.
    
    Opinions?
    
    Crispin
    
    --
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    
    
    
    
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