Re: Out of Office Auto Reply

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You will need exceptions - and hopefully your Exchange admin has put anti-spam filters in place at the gateway so you don't get spammed at work.

--?
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Jan Groshan asked:

| I can do that .... but how do I direct the rule to only be applied to
| "legitimate" email ?
|
|
| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
| <MillyS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
| news:elESW2h4HHA.1208@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| Use a rule and a template instead. The other item that Vanguard did
| not mention is the potential for a mail loop that will bring your
| exchange server to its knees. I have seen it happen and it is not
| pretty.
|
| --?
| Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
|
| Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
| unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
| reading.
|
| After furious head scratching, Jan Groshan asked:
|
|| I can't say I totally agree with your analysis of why outsiders
|| shouldn't receive OoO auto responses. In my particular case, we
|| shared an Exchange email server with another company of which we were
|| a tenant. We are now moving our offices and our email address is
|| changing. We want clients to be told "This email address is no longer
|| valid. Please redirect your email to _____(new email address)_____."
|| An OoO auto response seems the easiest way to avoid a deluge of spam
|| being forwarded. However, thanks for the suggestion that an OoO
|| responses coud be set to allow outsiders to receive. I'll definitely
|| check with the Exchange Administrator (if I can figure out who that
|| is!).
||
||
|| "Vanguard" <vanguard@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
|| news:eQgRl6g4HHA.5740@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
||| "Jan Groshan" <jangro@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
||| news:LONxi.18462$eY.4689@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|||| My Outlook (I think it's Version 2000) is running on Exchange
|||| Server. I have put in an auto reply in the out of office auto reply
|||| section, but I don't think it's working. At least when I've sent
|||| myself an email from an outside account, I don't get the auto
|||| reply. But I do get it if I'm within the network .... which is
|||| useless because everyone in the office already knows I'm not there.
|||| I need people outside the office to know.
||||
|||
|||
||| Talk to your Exchange admin.
|||
||| The Exchange admin should have configured OoO to *not* respond to
||| external e-mails. That is, the OoO should only reply to other users
||| within the same Exchange organization, not to outsiders. The
||| company should not be divulging that they have provided no coverage
||| for a missing, vacationing, sick, or otherwise absent employee. To
||| do so presents a negative image of that company to a customer. A
||| customer doesn't give a gnat's fart that an employee went on
||| vacation or got pregnant. They want to contact the company through
||| that employee but their primary objective is to actually reach the
||| company. Someone should have been designated to handle e-mails
||| through that absent employee's account or have those e-mails
||| automatically rerouted.
|||
||| Even if your company misconfigured their Exchange server so external
||| e-mails would trigger the OoO auto-responder, spammers are not the
||| ones to which those auto-responses get sent. Spammers never use
||| their own e-mail address. Spammers use bogus e-mail addresses or
||| those that they have harvested. At best, the auto-response e-mail
||| will be undeliverable (invalid domain or undefined username). At
||| worst, the auto-response hits an innocent that had nothing to do
||| with the spam mail (and such misdirected bounces or backscatter are
||| reportable to DNS blacklists, like SpamCop). Only during the actual
||| mail session between the sending and receiving mail hosts can the
||| sender be accurately identified (if the e-mail is relayed then the
||| relay host gets the rejection whether it handles it or not).
||| Sending bounces or OoO auto-responses after the mail session cannot
||| guarantee that it gets received by the actual sender, especially for
||| spam.
|||
|||
||| A company should not be sending OoO auto-responses outside the
||| company. They will not be received by spammer but they can afflict
||| innocents having nothing to do with the original e-mail. Such OoO
||| auto-responses sent outside the company also make it appear that
||| company hasn't a clue how to reassign their workforce to accomodate
||| employee absences (i.e., the company looks sloppy).
|||
|||
||| I believe Exchange 2007 can issue different OoO auto-responses to
||| internal and external senders. That way, they can try to cover up
||| their inability to reassign e-mail to someone else during an
||| absence. Since spam filtering at the Exchange server should be
||| effectively upstream of the auto-responder, the auto-responses will
||| not get sent to the obvious spam; however, there is no 100%
||| detection of spam. The number of innocents hit by the misdirected
||| OoO auto-response would be reduced, not eliminated. Legit senders
||| will end up seeing the alternate auto-response which is basically a
||| push-off to a customer which they consider rude, ignorant, and
||| temporary blocks their ability to communicate with the company
||| (i.e., they'll have to go find some other means to communicate to
||| get past the sloppy management of employee absences).
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Out of Office Auto Reply
    ... It all depends on your version of Outlook and if you have a Whitelist. ... I don't know about "all the types of spam" but you can experiment to see what works and what doesn't. ... | You will need exceptions - and hopefully your Exchange admin has put ... are not the ones to which those auto-responses get sent. ...
    (microsoft.public.outlook)
  • Re: Out of Office Auto Reply
    ... I think it's Outlook 2000. ... I'm going to have someone check with the Exchange Administrator ... don't know about "all the types of spam" but you can experiment to see what ... are not the ones to which those auto-responses get sent. ...
    (microsoft.public.outlook)
  • Re: Out of Office Auto Reply
    ... prevent the majority of spam from getting through? ... You will need exceptions - and hopefully your Exchange admin has put ... ||| for a missing, vacationing, sick, or otherwise absent employee. ...
    (microsoft.public.outlook)
  • Re: Out of Office Auto Reply
    ... mention is the potential for a mail loop that will bring your exchange ... | An OoO auto response seems the easiest way to avoid a deluge of spam ... || missing, vacationing, sick, or otherwise absent employee. ... || ones to which those auto-responses get sent. ...
    (microsoft.public.outlook)
  • Re: Out of Office Auto Reply
    ... receive OoO auto responses. ... In my particular case, we shared an Exchange ... to avoid a deluge of spam being forwarded. ... OoO auto-responses after the mail session cannot guarantee that it ...
    (microsoft.public.outlook)