I Think this would be a great idea -NOT!

[Deanne Palmer]

I thoroughly agree that not scanning a particular user's mail is Dangerous  for
all the other users on the network.  .   If the virus was only propagated
through e-mail, you might be able rationalize that it would be caught by the
mailscanner if it was re-propagated, but that's not always the case.  Open
shares and other means  are often used to send the virus on, once it's found a
home.  Therefore,  everyone on that network could be vulnerable.  Not a good
idea.  Users now trust that their e-mail is clean.  I'd hate to be put into the
position of having to explain why one of our trustees or president's staff
received a virus from a campus user because that user was permitted not to have
their mail scanned.  Although, that would certainly close that security hole  in
a hurry.
    Adding  a line to the site computing policy about scanning all mail for
viruses would probably be a good idea, , if it's not already there.


Julian Field wrote:

> At 14:52 07/02/2002, you wrote:
> >Something similar to how spamassassin does it would be wonderfull, that way
> >im not hating certain people who continously call me about thier email.
> >There should be an easy way for you to make it so you have a dont_scan.conf
> >file and list people who you dont want mailscanner to do anything with. If
> >this is possible i will love you guys even more!
> >thanks and keep up the good work.
> >Also, so i know, am i the only one who has this problem and would anyone
> >else even be interested in this?
>
> I have religious objections to writing this feature. Not scanning a
> particular user's mail is a **VERY** dangerous thing to do.
>
> People who live in a site protected by a virus-scanning gateway get
> accustomed to there not being viruses around, and are less careful when
> opening attachments etc.
>
> Your user, who does not have their mail scanned, receives a virus and
> ignores it. They send happen to send it on to 50 other people for some
> unknown reason, and 1 of those 50 double-clicks an infected attachment. You
> now have at least 1 virus-infected PC. Bad news :-(
>
> So sorry, I don't like the idea of being able to not scan various people's
> email. I think you should be educating your users of the dangers instead.
>
> That's what I did here with a couple of people who thought they were immune
> to PC viruses, and they have both since thanked me for declining their
> request as they later received viruses that would have caught them out.
> --
> Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
> jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
> Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
>                              Southampton SO17 1BJ





---------------------------
Deanne Palmer               dpalmer at skidmore.edu
Systems Administrator       Skidmore College
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