Bad MailScanner Publicity

[Matt Kettler]

At 01:24 PM 8/31/2003 -0400, Gerry Doris wrote:
>I don't know what to do about it but filling people's mailboxes with this
>nonsense is definitely not good publicity for MailScanner!  I know that
>the warning is now off by default in the new release but there sure are a
>lot of idiots spamming the hell of us using MailScanner!

Given that nearly all viruses come from a forged sender, and have been that
way for a VERY long time, I personally think that the ability to notify
senders of viruses should be disabled by default, if not completely removed
from the code.

Filename rule violations Ok to send messages back for. Viruses? don't
bother, you're nearly always spamming some poor innocent Joe.

I turned this feature off on my copy of MailScanner shortly after sobig
came out. I felt it was the only reasonably responsible thing to do. You
should too.

However, as negative publicity goes, MailScanner isn't the worst virus
bouncer.. I've been getting 100+ rejections a day, and some of them come
back *with the live virus still attached* and a body message indicating
it's bounced because it contains sobig.F. If they know it's a virus, why
are they sending me back the file too.

Most of the bounces are similar to MailScanner's.. just a notice of the
infection. Others however are including a full copy of the original
message, with all attachments. Either way it's still a _bad_ idea to send
back notices when 99.99999% of them are going to someone who is not involved.