EMBARRASSING TO THE LIST: Re: *WARNING* Your Email Account Will Be Closed

[Marco Colombo]

On Mon, 2005-05-30 at 16:01 -0400, Mark Nernberg wrote:
> The problem is that this crap comes through the Cyrus lists all the time!
> 
> If it were once, I'd keep my mouth shut.
> 
> And, don't give me that TrendMicro/ClamAV crap -- quality attachment
> filtering and simply disallowing attachments to the list would nip
> that in the bud.

Server-side global content-based filtering is silly, unless of course
it's your (private) server. Users are expected to do their own
filtering, otherwise they're exposed anyway. Server-side filtering (on
public servers) is just false sense of security.

Moreover, this is not a US-only list. In some countries unattended
filtering of messages addressed to third parties might be illegal per
se, virus, spam or whatever included (at most, you can add a header to
the message if you think it's spam or virus, but you _have_ to deliver
it).

Mailing lists may be special cases (think of moderators), but still you
should never rely on the server, you should implement a strong client-
side filter anyway. And once you have a strong local filter, additional
security provided by a remote (weaker) one is negligible.

.TM.
-- 
      ____/  ____/   /
     /      /       /                   Marco Colombo
    ___/  ___  /   /                  Technical Manager
   /          /   /                      ESI s.r.l.
 _____/ _____/  _/                      Colombo at ESI.it

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