vacation programs

[Gene Rackow]

I know the subject of vacation programs have come up a few
times in the past.  I'm curious what people may be using
to provide a reasonable auto-response.

The problem that I have seen popping up is the spammers
are sending mail directly to the users address.  The From
line is forged.  The spam is staying under the radar on
the various anti-spam measures in place so it gets
delivered to the user as a real message.  The vacation
program then responds to this junk mail.

In a few cases the person at the other end of the forged
address reports the vacation message as spam to some RBL
site.  The RBL site gives the option to respond that
this is, or isn't real, and wants us to take action.  If
we don't respond to them, they add our site to the
blacklist.

So far it's been managable, but I do see that things
are going to need to change before long.  

My current vacation program is based on the Unix vacation
rules.  Only respond to mail that you are listed on the
To: or cc: lines.  No response to mailing lists, precedence:
bulk or junk, some black-listed addresses, etc.

Many thanks.
--Gene