[afnog] Re: W32.Sobig.E at mm

[Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com>]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 05:12:03PM +0300, Mark Tinka wrote:
> Maybe if a list member decided to withdraw his subscription to the list, on
> account of the uol.co.ug MX being a virus gateway, how much intellectual
> benefit has been lost on that account?

Very little, since they clearly have no clue.

> This is all relative - service providers have anti-virus systems that check
> even outgoing e-mail. Whose benfit is that?

The service provider's. They having paying customers, and if they provide a
service to their customers which differentiates their service over other
ISPs, or which gives their customers a warm fuzzy feeling that perhaps they
are less likely to infect their business partners, then they will keep their
customers.

By the same token, attaching a footer to every outgoing mail saying "This
mail has been scanned by XYZ antivirus program" doesn't have any technical
benefit, in fact it wastes bandwidth, but if it makes customers happy then
it has a commercial benefit.

> If uol.co.ug can't do it in this regard, perhaps they should do it for the
> other "paying" domains on the server!

Orthogonal issue. Of course uol.co.ug are entitled to install AV software
for the benefit of their own users. It doesn't mean that we, as free users
of the mailing list service they provide on one of their machines, are
entitled to demand it.

Regards,

Brian.
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