Out of Office Assistant should not respond to spam qualified sende

[Guest]

Outlook 2003

When using the Out of Office Assistant, I would rather not send every
"qualified" spammer a verification that their email was received by a valid
user.

The OoO Assistant should be able to check against a list of rules regarding
potential spam email and thus not send a response.

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...745640338&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

Outlook 2003

When using the Out of Office Assistant, I would rather not send every
"qualified" spammer a verification that their email was received by a
valid user.

The OoO Assistant should be able to check against a list of rules
regarding potential spam email and thus not send a response.

OOF is part of Exchange, not Outlook, really - and a lot of admins don't
open up OOF to the internet for this and many other reasons. Your version of
Exchange server matters a lot, here, as well - E2003 has a few more options.

 

[Guest]

I completely agree with neoIDjoe. We use GFI to scan out incoming emails for
spam etc... It does a pretty good job of getting it right. However, when it
gets it wrong I don't want to be fiddling through everyone in my
organisation's spam just to find one mail, which might not even be there!
(People have a nasty habit of immediately calling me when a mail that they
were expecting mysteriously doesn't turn up). So instead of just deleting
spam or sticking it all in one big folder somewhere... We still send the spam
to the user's mailbox but with a tag appended to the message's subject like
"??SPAM??" Then we have setup a rule on each user's inbox which looks for the
tag and immediately siphons the suspected spam off into the Junk E-mail
folder. Ths works great! the user can go through their own junk at their
leisure and delete it themselves. Or if they want they can set it to auto
archive (delete) anything older than say, 30 days. Job done nice and neat....
Or it would be if it wasn't for OOF/OOA whatever you want to call it.

Unfortunately OOF when it is on will still respond to junk with an OOO auto
reply... or as neoIDjoe put it "verification that their email was received by
a valid user". That's bad enough but most spam is sent with a bogus reply
address so that each OOF auto reply will in turn produce a NDR in the users
inbox! Sometimes this is thousands a week and rather defeats the object of
having a spam filter to make your inbox more manageable.

I wouldn't mind but I know that exchange knows that stuff in the Junk E-mail
folder is junk... It doesn't pop-up a new mail has arrived alert when the
junk comes in!

Also from what I have read it seems that the OOF function is stored as a
rule in the inbox of the mailbox (with all the other rules). It is also
supposed to be the last rule executed... So if I were to put a "Stop
processing any more rules" clause in my spam siphoning rule then that would
stop OOF being called for spam messages.... I've managed to get that to work
on only one mailbox... mine and I don't really get any spam.

I've been looking at stuff with mdbvu32.exe to try and ascertain what is
going on... I thought that maybe the rules were in the wrong order on the
inbox. They might be, but how do I change the order???.. The order between
the OOF rule and the ordinary rules that is.

I have also read in other places that if you have a "Stop processing any
more rules" clause in a rule and that stops out of office from responding
then this is a bug!!! And you can fix it by applying a rollup package to
Exchange 2000.. What do you do if you want the bug???!?!?!?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Good-bye now

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

I completely agree with neoIDjoe. We use GFI to scan out incoming emails
for
spam etc... It does a pretty good job of getting it right. However, when
it
gets it wrong I don't want to be fiddling through everyone in my
organisation's spam just to find one mail, which might not even be there!
(People have a nasty habit of immediately calling me when a mail that they
were expecting mysteriously doesn't turn up). So instead of just deleting
spam or sticking it all in one big folder somewhere... We still send the
spam
to the user's mailbox but with a tag appended to the message's subject
like
"??SPAM??" Then we have setup a rule on each user's inbox which looks for
the
tag and immediately siphons the suspected spam off into the Junk E-mail
folder. Ths works great! the user can go through their own junk at their
leisure and delete it themselves. Or if they want they can set it to auto
archive (delete) anything older than say, 30 days. Job done nice and
neat....
Or it would be if it wasn't for OOF/OOA whatever you want to call it.

Unfortunately OOF when it is on will still respond to junk with an OOO
auto
reply... or as neoIDjoe put it "verification that their email was received
by
a valid user". That's bad enough but most spam is sent with a bogus reply
address so that each OOF auto reply will in turn produce a NDR in the
users
inbox! Sometimes this is thousands a week and rather defeats the object of
having a spam filter to make your inbox more manageable.

I wouldn't mind but I know that exchange knows that stuff in the Junk
E-mail
folder is junk... It doesn't pop-up a new mail has arrived alert when the
junk comes in!

Also from what I have read it seems that the OOF function is stored as a
rule in the inbox of the mailbox (with all the other rules). It is also
supposed to be the last rule executed... So if I were to put a "Stop
processing any more rules" clause in my spam siphoning rule then that
would
stop OOF being called for spam messages.... I've managed to get that to
work
on only one mailbox... mine and I don't really get any spam.

I've been looking at stuff with mdbvu32.exe to try and ascertain what is
going on... I thought that maybe the rules were in the wrong order on the
inbox. They might be, but how do I change the order???.. The order between
the OOF rule and the ordinary rules that is.

I have also read in other places that if you have a "Stop processing any
more rules" clause in a rule and that stops out of office from responding
then this is a bug!!! And you can fix it by applying a rollup package to
Exchange 2000.. What do you do if you want the bug???!?!?!?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Good-bye now

As I said, this is one of the many reasons you might leave OOF disabled.