Could multiple email auto-responses create an infinite loop?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Vacation Response Loop

What would happen if you sent an email to someone, who has an out-of-office auto-response set up, while you yourself also have an out-of-office auto-response set up.

Would this create an infinite loop and crash the email server?

Answer 1

Unlikely. Most Out-of-office alerts will only send one alert per sending address per day / week, so in your example your recipient would send you and out of office alert, which would trigger your system to send them an alert. Your recipient would then not send any further alert back to you, so no loop is created.

Answer 2

Yes, it is possible. An infinite loop would be created until the mailbox is full. I'm not sure if email providers are clever enough to detect this, but some of them might start categorizing the newer emails as spam.

Reference: http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/179886944/email-infinite-loop, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_loop

I only found a few examples online and they seem to be an year to two years old. Maybe the new email providers do check this.