[ale] Speedfactory now requires mail contents to be readable

Robert Story rstory-l at revelstone.com
Wed Dec 28 13:18:27 EST 2005


On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 11:06:27 -0500 Jerald wrote:
JS>  It is in Speedfactory's best interest to do  
JS> this type of automated scanning, so as to escape culpability in the  
JS> spread of viruses and trojans, as well as staying off various  
JS> blacklists hither and yon.

I don't know about that. Once they start inspecting content, doesn't that make
them *more* culpable? What's next, rejecting mail with dirty words that might
offend someone? Or PGP encrypted messages?  If I were a speedfactory customer,
I'd be screaming bloody murder, and checking my terms of service.

It's one thing for a company to have a policy to reject or quarantine
reception of encrypted zip files, but another thing entirely for an ISP to
block sending them.

All this will do is teach people to rename the file to '.txt', with
instructions to rename the file back to '.zip' to get to it. Once this becomes
the SOP, it won't be long before the virii employ the same methods to lure the
clueless into their trap.



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