Outlook Users who want to use the Out of Office Assistant are sometimes concerned about "informing" spammers they are absent because this confirms:

1. verifies that your email address is actually valid
2. is simply a weakness in your personal security - depends on your message - informs others that you are not at home!

Non Outlook users can set this mailserver setting using Outlook on the Terminal Server WINTERM1.

One way of reducing this and yet still use the Out of Office assistent is to at least filter out those mails marked as spam by setting an Out of Office Filter Action.

To do this decide first what your action will be, delete the mail or move it to a predefined spam folder, in this example SPAM-OOO. Initially you might want to just move the Mail.

In Outlook, click on Tools (Extras) > Out of Office Assistant... (Abwesenheits-Assistent)

then Add Rule ...

By selecting all those mails with [*****SPAM*****] in the subject you will trap any mails which your http://spam.web.psi.ch settings have been set to filter out as spam.This we would recommend to be between 5-7, anything above 7 may be deleted. Read more about how to set this up if you haven't already done so.

Now add this text [*****SPAM*****] in the Subject: field and choose either Move to or Delete, if move to select the folder, in this case, SPAM-OOO.

The second rule you will need is to filter those mails whose mail headers have been marked by our Spam Assassin with [X-Spam-Level: *****], i.e. Mails with a Spam Level of 5 or more - notice there must be no space after the *****s.

Again select Add Rule ...

Now add this text [X-Spam-Level: *****] in the Message body: field and choose either Move to or Delete, if move to select the folder, in this case, SPAM-OOO.

.

The result of your Out of Office Assistant filter is

This should stop all Out of Office responses to all mails with the Default Spam Setting of 5 - 7, where 7 is the Blocked Hits setting you have set on http://spam.web.psi.ch. Of course, Spam mail with a value less than this will still get replied to!

So now switch on your Out of Office Assistant and go on holiday. By the way we don't recommend being too detailed about your absence because of the personal security aspect, try and avoid giving the return date and give people who may be contacted in your absence.

i.e.: