On 04/26/01 at 09:51, Daniel Solomons wrote:
> Hello -
>
> On 4/26/01 5:00 AM, Darrin Cardani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Well, one thing that would be nice is to be able to simply reject a
> > message based on the subject.
>
> Yes! This is exactly the sort of creative solution I was talking about!
>
> The discussion shouldn't be about whether it is the ISPs responsibility,
> liability or burden to filter viruses. It shouldn't be about whether
> customers are naive or stupid, therefore somehow *deserving* to be
> victimized by viruses.
Nobody has made that argument in this discussion (the stupidity of users was
mentioned, but as an argument _for_ virus scanning as a way of saving those
users from their own stupidity).
> It doesn't solve anything to discuss the *likelihood* of a virus being
> sent through a particular server.
I haven't seen that mentioned in this discussion either but, yes, it's fairly
irrelevant.
> And we shouldn't dodge the question by considering the futility of
> blocking *all* viruses, or the negative impact a complete virus
> blocking system would have on the simplicity of sims.
Negative impact on the simplicity of SIMS _is_ relevant, as that very
simplicity is a major reason that many of us have chosen to use SIMS in the
first place.
> The question is, can we - easily - block *any* viruses that we now don't?
>
> It's a step in the right direction.
IMHO, no it's not. SIMS is a simple MTA that does only what's required of it
by the RFCs, without a lot of add-on features to bloat it and bog it down.
Many of us find SIMS attractive primarily because of its simplicity. We don't
need it to filter messages based on content and we don't want it to. If you
have a need for such filtering, SIMS is not the tool for the job. There are
other packages (including Stalker's own Communigate) that can do it for you.
> A subject line filter, if implemented, would really help. It would block
> known viruses that might be transmitted by a well meaning friend, and it
> would block *some* occurrences of "unstoppable" (eg "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" - chosen
> at random from my logs) spam. The load on sims would be minimal. It seems
> like a sensible suggestion :-)
If "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" is the return-path of a message (it doesn't look like a
subject line, so a subject line filter wouldn't catch it), you can route it to
'error' and turn on 'Verify Return-Path' and SIMS will reject it. However,
filtering on return-paths is pretty hit-and-miss, since they are easily forged
and spammers routinely vary them semi-randomly. Still, I have quite a few
entries of that type in my router. The point of it, however, is to stop spam
based on where a message comes from (or claims to come from), rather than any
sort of content filtering.
Since Stalker's commercial product Communigate can already filter messages
based on subject line, along with other content-based criteria (it's what the
'Rules' menu item in Communigator is for), I wouldn't expect them to be adding
it to SIMS. It's the sort of 'extra' feature that you would expect to get with
a commercial product, but is not necessarily appropriate for a simple,
no-frills, free MTA like SIMS.
Christopher Bort | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Webmaster, Global Homes | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://www.globalhomes.com/> | PGP public key available on request
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