I suspect a number of people have already responded to you (probably a few in a rather rude fashion), but just in case...
On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Brian Scott wrote: > I notice that many recent viruses are using faked return email > addresses. > > Consequently, when one of these infected emails is detected by spam > assassin, many systems appear to reply to the fake email address with > an "exact" copy of the original email - virus included and very much > dangerous. Why is SpamAssassin so misunderstood? I keep running into people (and not just stupid people) who just don't understand how it works and what it does. In any case, SpamAssassin does one thing and one thing only -- it scores emails. It does not bounce emails. It does not delete emails. It doesn't do anything other than score (and in one configuration, encapsulate spam as an attachment inside a warning email so HTML nastiness can't take you by surprise). Now, based on the score SpamAssassin assins an email, users and administrators can do anything all the other mail tools in the world allow them to do. They can use procmail to filter it all into folders. They can use it inside a milter to reject it in sendmail. They can even bounce it back to the sender using procmail or (I suspect) a number of other utilities. This functionality is not, however, part of SpamAssassin. Personally, I'm getting bounced mails from all the misconfigured gateway virus scanners out there. If you want to talk about irresponsibility, go after the idiots who actually sell their software and can't make it work right in the days of Klez and Sobig. > Now personally I could install spam assassin and deal with the problem > from my end (I've been meaning to do it for a while now) but I suspect > many people couldn't. For those that don't install it or use a few > brains, spam assassin has assisted in delivering the virus - the virus > writer doesn't care which user it gets delivered to so they have > succeeded. If you do decide to install SA, which I encourage you to do, please read the documentation carefully, as it appears you haven't yet done this. Due to you're basic misuderstanding of how SpamAssassin works, I'm cutting and ignoring the rest of your snide and smart-ass email. Now, for the rest of the SA community, what can we do to make SpamAssassin more understood? Perhaps something on the very first page of the website? Something else? I'm just tired of so many people I meet thinking this wonderful piece of software does things that it doesn't do. -- Public key #7BBC68D9 at | Shane Williams http://pgp.mit.edu/ | System Admin - UT iSchool =----------------------------------+------------------------------- All syllogisms contain three lines | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Therefore this is not a syllogism | www.ischool.utexas.edu/~shanew ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: VM Ware With VMware you can run multiple operating systems on a single machine. WITHOUT REBOOTING! Mix Linux / Windows / Novell virtual machines at the same time. Free trial click here:http://www.vmware.com/wl/offer/358/0 _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
