Sunday, September 12, 2004
One of my pet grumbles with email is auto-responders. I'm not a big fan, they're not necessary half the time and just create loads of white noise.
OK 'out of office' replies, though annoying are useful for business I suppose, but responders from email gateway filters and AV software just leave me seething.
Why? Do you ask.
Well, years ago it was deemed useful to respond to a viral message and alert the sender so the infection could be minimised. Some manufacturers even made it possible to send replies automatically, so that no human intervention was required.
That was then. The reality now is that most viral emails these days are spoofed. A spoofed email appears to come from one destination when in actual fact it comes from somewhere else.
Now, if we go back to the gateway filtering and antivirus software you can see the problem. The "helpful" reply doesn't go back to the infected machine, it goes elsewhere. Most of the time the reply goes back to a machine that is not even infected, creating confusion all around.
I've made a diagram to illustrate this point here.
People like me get really fed up with handling these autoreplies because they not only clog up the internet with nonsense rubbish, but they also fill up my inbox with crap.
I'm appealing to these companies, and to administrators of said software - please, PLEASE remove this "feature" from your products. It doesn't actually do anything useful any more. You're intelligent enough to realise that 99% of viral emails in the wild these days now do not originate from the sender. Stop spamming us!!
OK 'out of office' replies, though annoying are useful for business I suppose, but responders from email gateway filters and AV software just leave me seething.
Why? Do you ask.
Well, years ago it was deemed useful to respond to a viral message and alert the sender so the infection could be minimised. Some manufacturers even made it possible to send replies automatically, so that no human intervention was required.
That was then. The reality now is that most viral emails these days are spoofed. A spoofed email appears to come from one destination when in actual fact it comes from somewhere else.
Now, if we go back to the gateway filtering and antivirus software you can see the problem. The "helpful" reply doesn't go back to the infected machine, it goes elsewhere. Most of the time the reply goes back to a machine that is not even infected, creating confusion all around.
I've made a diagram to illustrate this point here.
People like me get really fed up with handling these autoreplies because they not only clog up the internet with nonsense rubbish, but they also fill up my inbox with crap.
I'm appealing to these companies, and to administrators of said software - please, PLEASE remove this "feature" from your products. It doesn't actually do anything useful any more. You're intelligent enough to realise that 99% of viral emails in the wild these days now do not originate from the sender. Stop spamming us!!
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