Langa Letter: The Danger In Auto-Reply Messages

Many Variations And Refinements
Once you start thinking about it, you can find many ways to prevent needless auto-reply broadcasts either by eliminating them altogether, targeting them only to narrowly-defined groups of recipients, and ensuring that your auto-responders don't get into an E-mail ping-pong match with someone else's auto-responder. It's not hard to do, and you just may save yourself and your company lots of processing time, bandwidth, and vulnerability to hostile E-mail.

Your E-mail client's help file can get you going: Search for "filter" or "rule" as a place to start. Find more help at:

Auto-Reply Help: Outlook and Outlook Express

Using Mail Rules Instead Of The "Out of Office Assistant" In Outlook

MS Knowledgebase

Eudora

Netscape Mail

Mozilla Mail

If you use an auto-responder, what steps do you take to prevent spammers from harvesting your E-mail; to prevent looping; and to prevent worms and viruses from using your address? What other methods are there to help avoid the problems described in this article? Join in the discussion!

To discuss this column with other readers, please visit Fred Langa's forum on the Listening Post.

To find out more about Fred Langa, please visit his page on the Listening Post.