On Monday 29 April 2002 22:15, Mate Wierdl wrote: > Lately, I received emails such as > > "I received a lot viruses from the lyx users list, and now my > windows partition is ruined." > > I am truly sorry to hear this, but: > > --- The virus _never_ originates from my server (the server is a > Linux server, and there are no other users but lyx (me)). The > path of a virus is either: > > -- virus is directly sent to the list And is spread to many many users by lyx-users list. As much as I know, I am no lawyer, according to european union law you are resposible for spreading viruses and dont use available techniques to prevent this.
> -- virus is sent to one of the subscribers, and then sends > itself to every address in the subscriber's addressbook. Since > the lyx list is in the addressbook, the list receives the virus. And again ist spraed to all lyx-users list members > --- If you want virus prevention via filters, you may want to > implement it on your end. It is much less riskier than > implementing it on my end. Indeed, I do not know of any > filters that would not do false positives. HHmmm, may be you should contact Mr Hendrik Vogelsang, [EMAIL PROTECTED] . He is the maintainer of [EMAIL PROTECTED] > If you implement it, make sure the message containing a virus > is not bounced back to sender but simply discarded. > > --- I certainly want to make list participation as pleasant as > possible but I feel no responsibility of any kind if "your hard > drive is ruined". Indeed, I do not see why it is my > responsibility to protect you from viruses; I am not your ISP. But you ar th maintainer of a mailing list which spreads viruses to a lot of users, which may not be as professional as you are. Due to my experience a lot/most users are not familiar with system administration. Especially Windows users. > Viruses are just one of our problems: spam is the other. I can > safely say that the only way to tackle both if we implement one > of the two methods I described in my previous email. So we have > to make the usual choice between security and convenience. Most of the spam mails was coded as HTML mail which could be blocked. Up to now I have not seen any spam mail going over this list which was not HTML coded. Sorry, but I have to disagree. Lyx List is the only one I know which don't filter theese attachments. Most list maintainers dont allow attachments and HTML mailings. Tools which allow a precise filtering of those trash can be found at freshmeat and savannah. Even under the aspect of decreasing unnecessary trafic which wil go over a mailserver its a _must_ to use such tools. btw. As a network administrator I wil not allow incoming mail from such a "security leak" as LyX-users list and would block all incoming trafic from LyXusers list. Pardon me if my posting sounds rude to you but I am not a native english speaker. :-) I believe almost all users subscribed to this list would accept a strict filtering of attachments and HTML mail. I dont know anyone who uses this or will not be able to participate using plain text mail. bye Thomas
