Re: [exim] OT: dead user

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Leonardo Boselli wrote:

> Off topic, but i think someone could help me:
> an user in my domain passed away yesteday.
> What is the best way to cope with it.
> she used her personal office e-mail address to receive correpondence for
> all the group, so forwarding to her substitute would expose to a leak of
> personal correspondence, setting an autoresponder saying the
> addressee is dead and office correspondence should be sent to a new
> address could lead to people not resending the message to he correct
> address.

The last isn't your problem. If they don't resend, that's up to them.
You can't force people to follow advice you offer them.

> what to do ?

Think about what you would do about her paper mail?

I probably wouldn't be so blunt as to say she is dead however ... maybe
just "permanently unavailable" or something, with an address for people to
direct enquiries. It would have thought it particularly distressing and
insensitive if she really is receiving personal mail and the sender
receives an autoreply saying that she is dead.

There's no perfect solution to this problem; circumstances will dictate
which particular solutions you implement to minimise inconvenience to the
organisation and maintain repect for personal correspondence.

In your shoes, I would probably go with a well-written autoresponder for a
fixed period of time (a year or two maybe, depending) that makes it clear
she won't be answering and mail won't be being forwarded and providing
appropriate contacts for the different functions of her roles and her
personal life, where possible. After that, remove the address so future
mail bounces.

I may also consider monitoring (through the logs, not directly) what mail
comes in, and have her address removed from mailing lists, etc, just so
that the amount of incoming mail is decreased and it is easier to look for
anomalies, special cases, and so on.

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Jethro R Binks
Computing Officer, IT Services
University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK