--On 20 December 2007 11:39:54 -0800 Jeroen van Aart <kroshka@???>
wrote:
> Phil (Medway Hosting) wrote:
>> It's not "collateral" spam. It's just plain "spam". That's the point I
>> would make to the powers that be !!
>
> It is not spam, because it is neither unsolicited (by emailing someone
> you allow them to respond, whether automated or not, I would say) nor
> bulk. You shouldn't just call something spam just because you don't like
> it: http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
You've missed the point. An OoO reply to a spam message will almost always
go to an innocent third party, whose address was used by a spammer. If the
spammer has used a single address for a large run of spam, then the owner
of the address will typically get hit by thousands of DSN, OoO and other
auto-replies.
If I send you a message, and I get an auto-reply from you, of course that's
not spam. If I get 1000 autoreplies per day, in response to a message that
I didn't send, then that's spam.
Phil's point about use of the word "collateral" is a good one. It's an
abuse of the term, because it implies that the original spam message is
hitting an unintended target. That's arguable not true with auto-replies -
they're new messages. At best, the victim has been caught in cross-fire,
but not by the original spammer.
>
> The vacation utility on unix seems smart enough to not be a nuissance
> and still be functional for those who need it.
It can be, if used with caution. You need to have a very good spam filter
in front of it.
> Regards,
> Jeroen
--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
x3148
