lauren@rand-unix.ARPA (07/07/85)
Lately we've seen increasing use of automated mail responders to send out messages replying to incoming mail when the addressee is out of town or otherwise unable to login for awhile. While these may serve a useful purpose in many cases by informing the person sending the original message that there won't be a real immediate response, they can cause substantial problems with mailing lists. For example, in some cases, the individual addressing mail to mailing lists may be bombarded with such automated messages from all over the nets. List maintainers may be similarly inundated. As the use of these automated mechanisms spreads, the problem is bound to get worse. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage anyone designing or working with such automatic response programs to ALWAYS include facilities for an "exception list" of originating points to which automatic messages will NOT be sent. These should probably be specified at both the system-wide and individual level. The code used to detect these exceptions should be smart enough to tell the difference between a true message from an individual and one that has an individual on the From: line but was actually re-sent or otherwise forwarded via a list. Efforts put into dealing with this situation now could avoid a lot of problems down the line! --Lauren--
heddaya@HARVARD.ARPA (A. Heddaya - Solom) (07/08/85)
Imagine the result if A sends a message to B (who is out of town), then leaves town himself: B's machine will reply automatically to A saying that B is out of town. By the time the message returns, A has alread left town, so A's machine automatically replies to B saying that A is out of town. Since B is still out of town, B's machine will reply automatically to A ... . . . . . . \Solom
dm@BBN-VAX.ARPA (07/08/85)
Once, a long time ago, in the dark ages of ARPANET history (even before there was SF-LOVERS), someone added a "Tell everyone who sends me mail that I'm on vacation" feature to their mailsystem, send a message to their friends about it, then left for vacation. One of this person's correspondents thought this was a wonderful idea, and added it to their mailsystem, too. The correspondent sent a note to the originator of the idea saying, "Great idea! I did it, too!" Then this person left on vacation. The "Great idea!" message arrived, and the dutiful answering machine sent a reply to the copycat saying its master was on vacation. The note from the answering machine arrived at the copycat's machine, and the copycat's answering machine sent a reply to the reply, saying its master was on vacation. The reply**2 arrived at the originator's machine, which prompted the answering service to answer,... Eventually one of them ran out of disk space. Thank Lesk, in UUCP, these connections take place only once every few hours, instead of on demand (as they do in the ARPANET).
lauren@rand-unix.ARPA (07/08/85)
Luckily, that scenario doesn't happen very often, since many (but not all) of the responders are smart enough to send only one copy of the message to any single person, regardless of the number of messages received. But this doesn't help with large mailing lists. If you're addressing 20,000 people, and only 1% have responders turned on... well, it's still a lot of junk mail. --Lauren--
fred@mot.UUCP (Fred Christiansen) (07/10/85)
don't i recall the story about when two of these things got to YELLING at
each other, flooding a network with garbage and repeatedly filling up
disks until someone turned the monsters off.
--
<< Generic disclaimer >>
Fred Christiansen ("Canajun, eh?") @ Motorola Microsystems, Tempe, AZ
UUCP: ihnp4!{attunix, btlunix, drivax, sftig, ut-sally!oakhill}!mot!fred
ARPA: oakhill!mot!fred@ut-sally.ARPA AT&T: 602-438-3472