While not defending the large vendor's weak points (although they keep my family fed and clothed and two kids in college) the point here could be seen as the changing world of email.

In a large organization, much the email traffic is inter-office not internet. When a notice is given to or request made of an individual, it is helpful to know that they are out of the office and not just ignoring the sender. Unfortunately, many people put too much information in the notice and I as well, have wondered about the security of their houses. It would be nice if you could select an Out of Office message that stays internal, but I don't expect MS to respond to user requests anytime soon. There may be better products but Microsoft's marketing is effective and many of us live with them.

The big change in email usage that I see that has occurred in the last several years is the user - they don't know or care about what's behind the software - they just want to use it to get a job done; it's a tool and nothing more to them. I think that's why there is so much confusion amongst some ListServ users - the why-do-I-have-to-confirm and can't-I-just-click-and-have-it-know-all-my-stuff type of questions. This new breed of users makes our lives as Network Administrators tougher, more user education, more patience and more resisting the urge to take their computers away from them is in order.

It also wouldn't hurt if MS would actually give us more robust secure software with useful features.

Doug


Doug Wheeler
Sr. Technical Analyst - Information Resources
Neenah Technical Center
Georgia-Pacific Corporation
email : mailto:[log in to unmask]
voice : 920.729.8178 fax : 920.729.8164



-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis Kletnieks [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 3:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ListServ 1.8d help


On Tue, 11 Dec 2001 15:51:55 EST, Pete Weiss <[log in to unmask]>  said:

> The OOOs are being sent to the RFC821 "bounce" address which is  the
> operand of the list definition keyword ERRORS-TO=

One particularly large vendor seems to think these 'Out Of Clue' error messages
should go back to the person who posted to the list.  This is particularly
annoying when you post to a large list - you're sure to get back at least
a dozen people who are 'Out of Clue' and have just advertised to you the
following things about themselves:

1) They are not at home because they are skiing in Switzerland until the 15th.
Certainly information you want kept on a need-to-know basis (I'm surprised
that roving bands of burglars haven't clued into this ;)

2) They will be prime victims for any of the popular e-mail based viruses
and trojans when they return (as the biggest marketshare offender puts in
a nice 'X-Mailer' header identifying itself).

Hmm... There you go - the solution is if you get one, mail them an e-mail based
trojan that replaces their email software with something more sane and
secure. ;)

/Valdis