On Thu, 2001-12-13 at 23:04, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [ On , December 13, 2001 at 12:40:59 (+0000), Nigel Metheringham wrote: ]
> > - reply to the envelope sender of a message, not the From:
> > line and not some other random header data
>
> I most strongly disagree with that advice. An autoreply tool is an
> agent operating on behalf of the user and MUST therefore reply in the
> same way the user would reply, i.e. normally using "reply-to:", or if
> there is none, the "from:" contents. Sending an auto-reply to the
> transport layer envelope address when such a reply is intended to reach
> the human originator of an incoming message is just plain WRONG (and
> won't always work either!).
>
> Note that sending autoreplies to the envelope sender address of message
> is also a sure way to get a flood of them in any list manager's mailbox.
I actually prefer them to go to the list manager than the list itself
(if reply-to is set to the list) or the original message sender for
stuff on a list.... or course since its a list message the autoreply
hasn't fired anyway (sick laugh).
> I don't know about all the other transports which support envelope
> sender addresses, but certainly with SMTP the ONLY valid use of the
> envelope sender address is to return delivery status notifications.
which is the nub of it... is an autoreply a form of DSN or a stand alone
message. My treatment of autoreplies is very much as a DSN varient.
[you noticed the redundancy in my ruleset - it wasn't really accidental]
Nigel.
--
[ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@??? ]
[ Phone: +44 1423 850000 Fax +44 1423 858866 ]
[ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]
