blocking out-of-office

[Chris Green]

Billy Pumphrey wrote:
> > >>My employees report that when they have the out of office turned on
>they
> > >>receive more spam.....
> > >
> > >
> > >I don't know how the two are related. Most spam I see doesn't have a
> > valid
> > >reply address.
> > >
> > >My suggestion is to use a *nix based autoresponder. Have it only
>reply to
> > >addresses in your address book. Or better yet, ditch the
>autoresponder.
> > >
> > Spam comes in and gets through filter
> > Out Of Office AutoReply goes out
> > Boiiiing! - NDR arrives in inbox
> > Therefore spam, in the implied sense of the word, would double.
> >
> > It pollutes auto-whitelists too, but doesn't usually expose you to
>more
> > spam
> > because bogus addresses are unlikely to be reused.
> >
> >
>
>Makes sense.  I also assume that Outlook 2003's client side filter sends
>out a Out of Office response to the filtered spam that ends up in the
>junk mail folder.  True?

If you are using Exchange 2003 behind Outlook 2003 the spam detection is 
done at the server end rather than by Outlook, so spam that it successfully 
detects (which is nowhere near the detection rate for MailScanner) never 
hits your inbox at all.

As per http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=31729

"Rules and the Junk E-mail Filter

Rules are now designed so that they do not act on messages that are moved to 
the Junk E-mail folder. This keeps e-mail you mark as junk in the correct 
place rather than moving it to another folder according to a rule that would 
otherwise apply."

I can't be absolutely certain because it's tough to test it out, but I 
expect the OoO will not fire either as it seems to be a glorified rule 
itself - too illogical for Microsoft to miss this one.