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I wanted to check if there is a way to differentiate between bounced emails and auto-responses (out of office replies,etc..)?

-Ashish

Ashish
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  • Can you elaborate? You can always tell by reading what the message contains.. but I don't think that's what you're really trying to do. – Shane Madden Apr 01 '11 at 14:55

1 Answers1

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No, not without reading them. Both use the null sender <> as the sender. Some auto-replies use a faked bounce, but deliver the email anyway. Some bounces are faked, and the message is delivered or quarantined.

You can tell whether the bounce was done during or after delivery by looking at the received header. Bounces and auto-replies may be generated in either case.

You may be able to somewhat reliably filter messages based on message content. This depends on the auto replies using standard messages which are unlikely to occur in a bounce message.

The bounce reason will appear in the headers, and you might be able to somewhat reliably filter some messages based on the added header(s).

BillThor
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