OT: "OMG YOU SENT TEH VIRUSESS"

[Jason Balicki]

Like a lot of you, I'm on a lot of mailing lists.

Because of this, I get a large amount of garbage
mail.  One particular type of garbage mail is
mis-configured mail scanning suites that send
"virus received" warning messages.  You all know
why this is bad, so I won't discuss this.  I'll
just say that it annoys me greatly -- especially
when my users receive them and I have to go
through the incredibly boring explanation of
what happened yet again.

What I'd like to know, though, is what the general
consensus is in regards to dealing with these.  Is
it bad form to track down the admin and explain
(gently) that it's a bad idea to send these?

I've sent mail to admins of domains before, but
I've never received an "ok, we understand" (sign
for OK!) back, and for the most part it does no
good, because I get the same messages over and
over.  The Samba users mailing list is especially
bad for this sort of behavior.

It's not like it's bad enough for me to black
list them, and threatening to blacklist their
domain from my domain is kinda pointless --
chances are they'd never need to send or
receive mail from us, ever.  But they're still
contributing to the problem of too much garbage
traffic and not the solution.

Has anyone had any success with these situations
before?  Any magic words that seem to help
straighten out the offending parties?

--J(K)

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