Minimum days between sieve vacation responses

[ktm at rice.edu]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2011 at 07:59:07AM +0100, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 04, 2011 at 12:22:54PM +0530, Ram wrote:
> > Can I configure sieve to send vacation responses for every message .. 
> > rather than waiting for "n" days before responding again to the same sender
> 
> Ouch - why?  There's a danger of mail loops, amongst other things.
> 
> Bron.

Double ouch, ouch! That is a really, really, REALLY bad idea. We actually
made a work-around within the mail system to make this happen and sooner
or later, in EVERY case, we had a massive mail loop or other type of self-
inflicted DoS against our mail infrastructure. In most of them, the users
themselves received so much mail that their mail clients were unable to
handle the volume and mail administrators were needed to clean things
enough for them to get back to work.

The moral is, if you need this, the implementation is far from trivial
and you will need to implement internal controls and feedback loops to
prevent these types of problems. Unless you are legally required to
do this, figure out another way.

Cheers,
Ken