--On Friday, February 22, 2002 11:01 AM -0500 Dave <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > If not, is there at least some specifics I can give my subscribers > about why it is their fault that this is happening? Here is L-Soft's stance on this problem: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/owner-faq.stm#16 In my experience, there are some very well-behaving vacation programs (autoresponders) and some very poor-behaving ones. Typically, the ones that are UNIX-based (vacation, procmail, etc.) are designed to send the response back to the appropriate address and they maintain a local database to prevent more than a single response going to the same return address. On the other hand, most of the "corporate" mail systems (i.e. Exchange, Notes, Groupwise, etc.) are almost always responsible for generating loops or sending responses to the address listed in the From address, which is incorrect -- it should be the address in the SMTP envelope (the one which the user doesn't see). I think it is the subscriber's responsibility to do one of these: 1) Don't use vacation programs at all. There are no standards for them, they cause more problems than they are worth, and they typically annoy many people who don't care where you are. 2) If you have to use one, make sure it is sophisticated enough to take measures to prevent mail loops and send its replies to the appropriate return address. 3) Set your mailing lists to NOMAIL when you go on vacation. Ultimately, if they refuse to do any of these, then it is the list owner's responsibility to disable them in one of several ways -- REVIEW, NOMAIL, SERVE OFF, UNSUB, etc. -- until they return from vacation or comply with the above responsibilities. Alan