Please do not send out-of-office reports to postings.

[John E. Malmberg]

Folks,

If you are using and out-of-office or vacation notice program on your 
e-mail program, please set it so that it does not respond to mailing 
list e-mails.

There should be a setting for this, as mailing list e-mails have special 
codes in their headers to identify them.  Contact your e-mail 
administrator if you need help on this.

Also be aware that at least one convicted criminal has stated in 
interviews that he and others use out-of-office notices from e-mail and 
voice mail to locate targets for identity theft.

This method was used to steal from many companies before this person was 
caught and is still being used by other criminals.


So sending an out-of-office message to unknown people is not a good idea 
for your personal or company security.

A voicemail message can give an alternate contact, but should not let 
out information to a criminal to know that you are not going to be 
around for a while.

On a U.S.network TV show a few years back, it was demonstrated to a 
company by a security specialist that just by using a phone and calling 
until they got an out-of-office voice mail they were able to obtain the 
dial in number to the computer network, and got an account name from the 
help desk and the password reset.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only