Avoiding mail delivery messages with vacation programs

Well, GMail incited me to solve a problem I've had for a while. What was the problem? I get a ton of "mail undeliverable" emails ("Mail Delivery Subsystem..." emails) because I have a few vacation files set up on old email accounts in various astronomy departments. Why? Spammers spam me, the vacation program responds and, as their accounts are usually superfluous, I get email back from their mail servers saying that they can't deliver my (permanent) vacation message.

The problem has been I've gotten so in the habit of just outright deleting these damn messages as soon as they arrive (or with a filter in GMail since I can't trash them with a keyboard shortcut) that I miss legitimate "mail undeliverable" emails when I send email to a bad address.

What's the solution? It turns out the mail delivery programs obey the "Precedence: bulk" standard... (thanks, Parker) that is, they won't send undeliverable mail responses to emails that have this string in their headers. So, how do you add this to a header of a vacation message? Simple, if you have command-line access, open the file in your root directory called .vacation.msg and add the line:

Precedence: bulk

right after the Subject: line. Save the file, and presto! Now you should only get legit. mail delivery failure messages.

UPDATE [2004-05-20 19:43:36]: Note, that bulk above should be all lowercase.

Posted by joebeone at Mayo 20, 2004 01:21 PM | TrackBack