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<TITLE>RE: Whitelisted</TITLE>
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Actually I placed Ken A, Pacific.Net's excellent solution for this in the MailScanner FAQ.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/169.html">http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/169.html</A><BR>
<BR>
How easy can it get.<BR>
<BR>
Steve<BR>
Steve Swaney<BR>
steve@swaney.com<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/169.html"></A><BR>
On Tue, 2003-07-22 at 16:19, Derek Winkler wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2"><I>See earlier thread on splitting messages with multiple recipients into messages with one recipient each as a workaround.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"></FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">-----Original Message-----<BR>
From: Matt Kettler [</FONT><A HREF="mailto:mkettler@EVI-INC.COM"><FONT SIZE="2"><U>mailto:mkettler@EVI-INC.COM</U></FONT></A><FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">]<BR>
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 4:16 PM<BR>
To: MAILSCANNER@jiscmail.ac.uk<BR>
Subject: Re: Whitelisted</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"><BR>
</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">At 12:00 PM 7/22/2003 -0600, Dustin Baer wrote:<BR>
> > Dustin,<BR>
> > Maybe that is where my misunderstanding is. I thought, that would turn off<BR>
> > spam filtering for that user only. Does that say anything addressed to<BR>
> that<BR>
> > user and anyone else, will go through?<BR>
><BR>
>Hi Kris,<BR>
><BR>
>As far as I understand MailScanner's whitelisting, if one recipient is<BR>
>in the whitelist, all recipients receive the message. I have run into<BR>
>your situation also, and refuse to whitelist recipient names here, if I<BR>
>see that they receive a high volume of spam. I don't want other people<BR>
>getting spam, just because they want their name whitelisted.<BR>
><BR>
>I am sure someone will correct me, if I have mis-stated how MailScanner<BR>
>operates its whitelist.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"></FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">That is correct. And this "problem" is a fundamental limit of running at<BR>
the MTA layer. It's not a bug, or a mistake, it's a design tradeoff between<BR>
flexibility and efficiency.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"></FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">Mailscanner runs at the MTA layer, not the MDA layer, so there is not one<BR>
copy of the message per user when MS sees it.. there's just one message<BR>
with many recipients. Thus MailScanner can only whitelist that one message,<BR>
or not whitelist it. There is no such thing as "well, later when you go to<BR>
deliver this, give these guys this copy, and that guy this other version".<BR>
It's one message, and they'll all get the same message, all MailScanner can<BR>
do is edit it.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"></FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">Running at the MTA layer is much more efficient, because you only scan the<BR>
message once, but it inherently has limits on "per user" customization. The<BR>
MTA layer is the ideal spot to do virus scanning, because you rarely want<BR>
user-specific behaviors for virus scanning. However doing spam scanning at<BR>
the MTA layer is somewhat limiting if you've got users that need "exceptions".</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"></FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373" SIZE="2">Personally I deal with it by creating custom SpamAssassin rules instead of<BR>
whitelists. This gives me the ability to target specific kinds of messages,<BR>
rather than specific sources or destinations. If I have to do a whitelist,<BR>
I try to make it a "fromto" type whitelist where it winds up narrowly<BR>
defined. I never use To: type whitelists, and I avoid simple From:<BR>
whitelists as well.</FONT><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#737373"></I></FONT><BR>
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