how about just suspending them automagiclly for 7 days? Or offering a way for them to suspend themselves prior to vacation for X days? -Jon -----Original Message----- From: Crispin Cowan [mailto:crispinat_private] Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 12:23 PM To: Linux Security Module Subject: 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 _______________________________________________ linux-security-module mailing list linux-security-moduleat_private http://mail.wirex.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-security-module _______________________________________________ linux-security-module mailing list linux-security-moduleat_private http://mail.wirex.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-security-module
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