Industry Sunset of Auto-Replies and Bounce Forwarding Functions
How Auto-Replies Work Today
When a user puts an out-of-office reply on their mailbox this message is returned to the sender. Historically this has followed either the From Address or Reply To Address (dependent on recipient server) that you use for your Vuture mailings.
How Auto-Replies are Changing
Most email platforms and mail servers now suppress automatic out-of-office replies to external or bulk senders by default. This change is driven by major mailbox providers (including Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and others) as part of a broader effort to prevent information leakage and reduce spam-loop risk.
The position of mailbox providers is that automatic out-of-office replies pose a privacy and data-exposure risk. Such replies can potentially disclose personal information, including staff names, roles, working patterns, and absence details, to external recipients. This exposure is inconsistent with current data-protection expectations and best practices.
As a result, fewer automated replies are now generated. These replies may still appear when emails are sent between users within the same organisation or a nominated trusted domain, but they are typically blocked or discarded for external recipients.
This is an industry-wide behaviour change, not specific to Vuture, and is intended to protect recipients’ privacy and prevent potential misuse of automated responses.
As a result, the industry expects to see a significant decrease in the number of auto replies returned to any external sender, which includes Vuture.
Legacy Auto-Forwarding Systems
There are legacy systems that auto-forward auto replies to another recipient. Vuture historically had a similar system, however as part of our ongoing security and compliance program, we retired this several years ago.
The underlying software was no longer supported by its developer and had not received meaningful updates or security patches for several years. It also relied on deprecated encryption algorithms (such as SHA-1) and ran on Windows Server 2012 R2, which reached end of support in October 2023. Continuing to operate unsupported software would expose both Vuture and client data to security vulnerabilities that cannot be remediated.
In addition, this forwarding mechanism did not support modern email authentication standards, including DKIM signing, which are now required to ensure message integrity and meet the sender requirements introduced by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in 2024/2025. Emails lacking these controls are increasingly rejected or flagged as non-compliant.
For these reasons, as well as the stricter privacy requirements set out above, this functionality has been permanently discontinued and will not be reinstated.
