[Exim] Proper autoresponder behavior

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Author: Mark Morley
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] Proper autoresponder behavior
This isn't specifically related to Exim, but in light of the broken
autoresponder we just witnessed...

We have some software we've developed that allows end users to filter
and process incoming mail in all sorts of ways (you can read about it
at www.islandnet.com/pep). One of the things it can do is generate
automatic replies.

Here's what it looks for before sending a reply. Am I missing anything?
Am I being overly cautious with any of these?

   - It replies to the return-path value, not reply-to or from.  There seems
     to be some debate about this - comments?


- It won't reply to DSN messages (sender is <>)

   - It won't reply to addresses that match "mailer-daemon@*", "postmaster@*",
     "*-request@*", "owner-*@*", or "bounce-*@*".


   - It won't respond to messages that have a Precedence: header containing
     "bulk", "list", or "junk".


   - It won't respond to any message that contains an "x-mailing-list"
     header or any "list-*" headers.


   - It has a user-configurable response limiter so they can set it to
     send only one reply every X hours, days, weeks, etc.


   - The reply message itself is sent with a "Precedence: junk" header and
     a null return-path.  If the customer wants it to be replyable they can
     add a Reply-to header.


Mark