On 11/10/02 07:23 +0530, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote: > Legality issue : Not only is it legal for vsnl to run dumb or intellegent > antivirus scanner software at the sever, but the current law also allows > them and the government agencies to read any email comming through the > sever, as a part of "security" measures. Ummm, think of virus scanning and spam filtering as defensive issues. Also, the VSNL servers are their property and they can do what they want on those servers. Given that spam can really be fought effectively at the ISP level, and not at the individual level, you have to fight it there. [Spam costs the ISP in network bandwidth, in storage space and administratve overhead. Dropping spam before it gets to the mail server is the right thing(tm) to do (1). Allowing mail to come in and then tagging it as spam is just administrative and system overhead. Virus filtering is required for all those idiots who allow their systems to be infected (2) by the viruses because they are too cheap to update their antivirus subscriptions. Saves bandwidth for the end user, and prevents others from getting infected. (1)]
> Remeber, even in a privacy concerned place like usa, the government runs > software like carnivore, which scanns every email going through the usa All the more reason to use crypto. Use gpg and/or TLS. Devdas Bhagat (1) It can be upto 5% of bandwidth that gets saved for a small ISP, so VSNL wil probably get a much bigger saving, even upto 10%. (2) You can get upto 1000 mails/day from an infected machine, each of about 50-100 kb. Multiply by the number of infected machines. (3) If you don't like what your ISP does, get yourself a domain and run your own server. Don't use your ISPs SMTP/POP/IMAP server at all. _______________________________________________ http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
