Vacation Responders - SpamCop Dictionary

Adapted from the Forum SpamCop Glossary

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Vacation Responders A "nice" but dangerous feature found in many email client programs. It may be refered to by various terms, such as Out of Office Notice, Vacation Message, etc.
It will automatically send a prewritten reply to all messages received informing the "sender" that "you" have received the message but may be delayed in reading and or responding to the message.

In todays internet enviroment this has become a bad thing for several reasons; unless its usage can be programmed to deal with the problem of forged "from" / "reply to" addresses used in most spam. By automatically responding to messages with forged addresses, you risk having your mail server added to various blocking lists. This may be the result of replying to a spamtrap or to a victim who has now been buried by thousands of automatic replys from the millions of messages sent by a spammer who used their address (without permission) as a reply to address. The problem for you is that many ISP's and users to which you need to send email may automatically reject, flag, or delete your mail and the mail of all other users who happen to be using the same mail server as you to send their mail. In some cases you may received a notice that the mail was rejected, while in other cases the mail is simply automatically deleted without being processed.

The following definition hints at another reason to avoid the use of Vacation Responders:
A vacation responder is a service that you can set on many mail servers to automatically let criminals know that they can steal your identify for a specific period of time with out fear of getting caught. It allows them to steal anything from your company that someone else thinks you are authorized to mail with out your signature.

These criminals are also known to use voicemail vacation messages for this purpose.
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Additional Sources for Glossary Information
The SpamCop Glossary is being limited to terms used within the SpamCop Forums. The following additional links provide far more information which may both help to better explain terms defined in the SpamCop Glossary as well as many more terms not included here. They are listed in no particular order.

NetLingo - The Internet Dictionary
NetLingo contains thousands of definitions that easily explain the Internet and the online world of business, technology, and communication. Updated weekly with new terms, NetLingo is (currently) ranked #656 in Google's Top 1000 Web sites and reviewed in many publications.
Our mission is to educate and entertain you, and keep you up-to-date.

The Jargon File
The Jargon File is a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.

Wiktionary
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Wiktionary serves to:
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WB8TYW (aka John)
Wazoo
turetzsr (aka Steve T)
StevenUnderwood (aka Steven P. Underwood, DNRC)
qjvgpuryy (aka David)
Miss Betsy
Lking
Larry Kilgallen (ng member)
Jeff G.
Jank1887
dbiel

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