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Re: X-Loop question

1998-12-27 03:32:58
On Sun, 27 Dec 1998 01:09:38 +0200 (EET), I wrote:
On Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:30:14 -0700, Carlos Sotero-O10006
<Carlos_Sotero-O10006(_at_)email(_dot_)mot(_dot_)com> wrote:
Right now a reply to the auto reply in the message results 
in another auto reply from this account.
This seems to mean: when a user +responds+ to the autoresponse they
get another autoresponse. This is probably true unless by some heavy
magic their mail program would somehow insert the X-Loop: header
you're looking for. (For the record, no MUA in the known universe
currently does this.)
A more or less standard way to avoid responses to autoreplies is to
set up the autoreply with a faux sender address which clearly says
"don't respond here" and if they try it anyway, they get a bounce.
(Personally, I'm not sure I think this is the best way to do it.)

A more elegant, but less safe, way to do it is to generate a
Message-Id with a particular pattern in it, and then don't respond to
incoming messages with Message-Id:s matching that pattern in the
References: or In-reply-to: fields. (I believe it's fairly safe to
assume your MTA will pass on any Message-Id:s inserted by your local
software. You should test this, obviously.)

And of course, you can always do the standard formail -rD thing to
never respond more than once to the same address.

You could also replace "faux header" above with e.g. your personal
address, seeing as responses to autoreplies might actually be worthy
of your attention (YMMV. If you have lots of newbies pressing the
Reply button because it looks nicer than the Delete button, you might
want to apply additional filters somewhere.)

/* era */

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