Out of office

[emgee]

Is there any way of setting an out of office response? My first thought was to create a rule in Message Filters, but there doesn't seem to be an action for sending a reply. Am I missing something obvious?

[Moonchild]

You can use message filters and "reply with template" as action for messages that match your criteria.
This solution requires that your computer is turned on and the mail client is running the entire time you are away. This is not recommended and can potentially be abused if a bad actor finds they can use your Epyrus as an amplifier for their attacks because of the autoresponder (which might also get you in trouble with your ISP). Because of this, I do not recommend you do this.

You may want to see if there is a mailserver solution for this for you, which are generally better suiter to send these kinds of messages, usually have mitigations for abuse, etc...
If and how this is available depends greatly on your mail provider.

[emgee]

Thanks, Moonchild. I thought I could do it that way, but I don't have an option to 'reply with template' as an action, hence the question and my assumption that I am missing something.

Unfortunately, my mail provider's options for autoresponder are very limited and I recently ended up with my autoresponder endlessly exchanging emails with someone else's autoresponder, until the other party blocked me temporarily.

I am aware of the risks, but as I know the email addresses that I need to advise that I am out of office if they email me, I could create rules to reply only to their substantive messages. I would have thought that this should prevent a bad actor exploiting my Epyrus. Am I wrong?

[Moonchild]

I don't have an option to 'reply with template' as an action, hence the question and my assumption that I am missing something.

You'll have to create a template first. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_templates for information.

my mail provider's options for autoresponder are very limited and I recently ended up with my autoresponder endlessly exchanging emails with someone else's autoresponder

There's no easy way to avoid this in Epyrus either as it won't keep track of whether the message filter was already triggered before.

I could create rules to reply only to their substantive messages. I would have thought that this should prevent a bad actor exploiting my Epyrus. Am I wrong?

You'll have to be explicit in which rules trigger the message filter that sends a template response, but yes, that could avoid abuse (mostly through obscurity).

Once again though, this setup will only work if you leave your system on with Epyrus running, otherwise no responses will be sent. Just keep that in mind, too.

[emgee]

Thanks very much. I hadn't realised that I had to create the template first - I knew I was missing something!

Yes, I realise that I will have to keep Epyrus running, but that's probably a better option that generating 250+ autoresponses and being blocked by the sender. I can filter by sender then by content to screen out their autoresponses, so I should be able to prevent an endless email loop.

Thanks again for your all your help.

[Navigator]

In light of the possibility for abuse, accidental ping-pong, the waste of electricity, and leaving your system on but unattended and open to attack, why not simply send a single message preemptively to the list of addresses that are concerned?

[Moonchild]

In light of the possibility for abuse, accidental ping-pong, the waste of electricity, and leaving your system on but unattended and open to attack, why not simply send a single message preemptively to the list of addresses that are concerned?

If you are a public contact, you can't do this. Also, if you have many contacts, sending such a message out can be seen as spammy (exactly how many would you have to send out?...)

[Navigator]

What's the definition of public contact in this context? He wrote "I know the email addresses that I need to advise that I am out of office if they email me" which sounded manageable to me.

I think a solution would be a new filter action Remove From Address Book. One could create a new address book, put into it the list of addresses which should get an auto-reply, and configure a filter to run on matches to it with the first action being an auto-reply, and the second the new Remove action. This should ensure only a single reply to each address.

[emgee]

Thanks, Navigator, that's a really elegant solution. Unfortunately, it might not be so practical to implement in this case, as I only know the domains of the addresses I want to respond to, not the individual email addresses. On the other hand, I know the content of the autoresponder messages, so I can filter them out.