on Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 08:56:48PM -0800, Ross Boylan (RossBoylan@stanfordalumni.org) wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 04:15:45PM -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> ...
> >
> > Earthlink have implemented virus and spam filtering within the past
> > month or so, early November, if time serves.
>
> That explains some of the confusion. It's good they are trying to be
> responsive. Too bad they aren't doing it better.
>
> As an aside to the comment that earthlink said they couldn't scan for
> viruses because that would be an invasion of privacy: one support
> person I spoke to hinted that the real issue was that scanning the
> entire body of email messages takes more resources than scanning the
> headers. They may have resisted doing anything because of a shortage
> of CPU power (yes, I know, viruses consume CPU, bandwidth, disk space
> even if ignored...). They also claimed that they weren't getting that
> many swens over their subscriber base. This is perhaps true if it was
> harvesting off usenet postings.
>
> >
> > It's more than slightly flawed in several regards:
> >
> > - There's no SMTP-time blocking -- the only way to reliably inform a
> > sender that their message wasn't delivered, without joe-job risks.
> joe-job = ?
STFW <i-mean type="in the nicest way">
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22joe-job%22
> >
> > - Viruses are filtered to a "quarantine" folder, which you still have
> > to check and clear periodically. Whether and how this counts to you
> > 10 MiB mail buffer quota isn't clear. Filter is based on Brightmail
> > IIRC. This is *not* enabled by default, but must be selected by the
> > subscriber.
>
> Their junk mail folder, according to their webmail interface, does not
> count against your quota, but may get periodically cleared out. I'll
> have to check what the relation of this is to the new stuff, but
> probably it will work on the same principle.
There are several layers of ambiguity about this. It appears poorly
considered in balance.
> Although filtering should "obviously" be done by service providers, it
> seems they have a lot of trouble getting it right. Mail to me goes
> through two service providers (one of them is just a forwarder, and I
> only recently found out they were attempting to remove spam). In both
> cases, I see non-trivial numbers of legitimate messages classified as
> spam and never delivered to me. As you point out, they never even
> report anything about what's going on.
I'm simply boggled that they can do this and think by any stretch of
logic or ethics that it's in some manner OK.
That said, most ISPs get a whole lot of crud wrong. AOL was blocking
mail from me to my mother for some nine months, without notifying her of
the fact in advance, admitting it on inquiry, or offering any
alternatives.
That said, users can be a PITA, and _any_ introduced variance in the
system is another opportunity for things to go wrong. Lord knows I
generally fsck myself up with even apparently minor changes to procmail
rules. Mail is high-volume, affects lots of people, barely adheres to
even nominal standards by minimal margins, and is seen as a birthright
on the Internet....
> (The irascible gentleman whose post started this thread apparently
> believes individual viruses are being sanitized by earthlink and
> delivered to him, but no one else has suggested they are doing that.)
There are various nodes through which mail is delivered. Some are
taking to stripping viral payloads. I've taken to reporting such
mail as spam, traning SA on the material, and spamlisting any
originating reporting addresses.
> Did earthlink send a notice of this change, or did they just do it? I
> didn't know about it. But then, I usually don't read their
> newsletters, where I suppose they might have mentioned it. I used
> their webmail interface quite recently, and didn't see anything
> suggesting their filtering options had changed.
The announcement was scattershot at best. Some press, website notice,
IIRC. Though I rarely hit their own site.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
The Earth *is* flat. But Mars is sharp and Venus is in tune, which
makes up for it.
Attachment:
pgpm8ZsN4Mlo2.pgp
Description: PGP signature