Stopping MailScanner on a per user basis ...

[Julian Field]

At 20:02 02/10/2002, you wrote:
>We have made the policy.  Every piece of email coming and going through our
>systems is scanned.  There's always one in the crowd that is not going to like
>it.  I value your advise, however, in version 4.00.07a to please this one
>hardheaded user, how?

Set virus scanning to be a rules file in mailscanner.conf:
Virus Scanning = /opt/MailScanner/etc/rules/virus.scanning.rules

Then create the rules file itself, containing something like this

To      nuisance at your.domain.com        no
fromto  default yes

So all mail; will be scanned, except messages to nuisance at your.domain.com.
Note that mail *from* the nuisance user will still be scanned :-) If you
don't want to scan mail from him either, then use "fromto" instead of "To".

Note that when it is compiling rules files, MailScanner is really lax about
what it allows and recognises, so you can use anything that contains "from"
and/or "to". If you want to match both the recipients and the sender at the
same time, anything with "and" in it will do. You can use this, for
example, to only sign mail entering/leaving your site, so
FromAndTo       your.domain.com no
fromorto        default                 yes
will always be "yes", except when *all* the addresses in the message are
within your.domain.com.

The rules system I have created can do loads of things like this, most of
which haven't even occurred to me yet.
:-)

Jules.

> > At 18:26 02/10/2002, you wrote:
> > >Is there a way to have MailScanner skip users that have requested that
> none of
> > >their emails be checked for viruses or spam?
> >
> > The best to solve this problem is by making an institution policy
> > that all email will be scanned. It's all very well, but how do you
> > know that the people who are not having their mail scanned are not
> > forwarding mail internally to other people? It's about the easiest
> > way to let viruses in to your organisation!
> >
> > Once people are used to their mail being scanned, they tend to get more
> > relaxed about the safety of mail coming to them. After all, every
> > bit of mail entering the site has already been checked anyway,
> > hasn't it?
> >
> > I had a couple of people who didn't want their mail scanned,
> > including a member of senior management. I held my ground and
> > refused. Within about 3 months both had thanked me for saving them
> > from virus/spam attacks.
> >
> > I should write a faq on this...
> >
> > P.S. If you really must do this, it is easy in V4. But my advice is
> DON'T!!!
> > --
> > 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
>
>
>--
>Vegetarian Recipes! (http://www.vegipes.com)

--
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