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Re: Overzealous auto-responding?

1997-09-23 10:47:25

Over the past six months, a significant number of individuals have begun
forwarding multiple copies of every spam message they receive to the IRS
and other federal agencies. Frequently, these messages are transmitted via
procmail filters and are not being screened by the recipient.  

[snip]

This situation was further exasperated recently where a programming glitch
in an automated mail filter caused what effectively was an email bomb
attack on the IRS.  The individual responsible could have faced federal
criminal charges for their negligence.

IMHO, anyone idiot enough to auto-forward messages to any official should
be charged.  It is irresponsible to randomly autoforward messages.  

The most any filter for non-specific addresses should do is either bounce
or delete mail.  Unless the filter is something testing for the classic
Dave Rhodes Pyramid scheme, it is unlikley any filter is going to detect
potential tax fraud in an email.



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