Email signing

[Julian Field]

At 18:07 13/08/2003, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Ok - I work for a legal firm so I guess I should have guessed that this
>subject would come back to haunt me!
>
>Using MS is it possible to:
>
>1. sign all outgoing emails with a default signature (disclaimer) except if
>a specific string is added to either the end of the subject line or to the
>email body.

You would have to do this using a simple "Custom Function" placed in
CustomConfig.pm. There is a very simple sample included at the top of the
file for you to use as a starting point for your own code. If you look at
that, then virtually all the code I include below will look *very* similar :-)

For example, set
SignCleanMessages = &SignClean
in MailScanner.conf, then add this to CustomConfig.pm

# This is the string that must occur at the end of the subject
# line for it to get to signature.
my $SignCleanSubject = 'no disclaimer';

sub InitSignClean {
   # No initialisation needs doing here at all.
   MailScanner::Log::InfoLog("Initialising SignClean: " .
   "not sending when subject ends in $SignCleanSubject");
}

sub EndSignClean {
   # No shutdown code needed here at all.
   # This function could log total stats, close databases, etc.
   MailScanner::Log::InfoLog("Ending SignClean");
}

# This will return 1 for all messages except those whose
# subject line ends in $SignCleanSubject.
# Allow blank spaces after the special string as well,
# as users can't see them and may inadvertently type them.
sub SignClean {
   my($message) = @_;

   return 1 unless $message; # Default if no message passed in

   return 0 if $message->{subject} =~ /$SignCleanSubject\s*$/i;
   return 1;
}

Then just restart MailScanner.

>2. Have the email signature at the start of the email body and not the end.
>I am not sure if you are aware but a lot of lawyers are now saying that a
>confidentiality disclaimer appended to an email is not legally binding
>unless you refer to it at the start of the email BEFORE the reader has a
>chance to read the main text.

I'll ignore the obvious remarks about this being a complete waste of time
and effort...
The only current way to do it would be to set
Non Spam Actions = attachment deliver
and change the spam report to actually be your disclaimer instead.

No-one has asked for that before. If you really need it, give me a shout
(and possibly some inducement to write it) and I'll see how difficult it is
to implement. I need to make it work with digital signing and encryption as
well, which always complicates things a bit.

#include <stddisclaim.h>
--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
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