Libelled by a mail filter?
by Simon at 13:53 16/08/04 (Blogs::Simon)
So this morning I get a request from someone who's having trouble registering on a site, claiming that despite registering twice they've never got a 'Welcome' mail with their account details.
Naturally, I want to help, so spend a few minutes going through the logs checking that indeed we did send the email and the remote mailserver accepted it. Good news - that means the problem's at the user's end.

Done and dusted? Nope. A while after sending my reply, including the relevant log lines to help the user track down what happened to the inbound email at his end, I get a message from them asking what was in my previous email because their system has quarantined it with the following message:

-----Original Message-----
From: Mailsweeper Mailer
Sent: 16 August 2004 10:37
To: ******, *****
Subject: Message Quarantined - Re:Fwd: RE: SUSIE

Mailsweeper has quarantined a possible virus attachment.

To: *****@****sman.co.uk

From: simon@shout**.com
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 11:37:14 +0100
Subject: Re:Fwd: RE: SUSIE
Classification: Incoming Virus Attachment Detected

Reason: This email contains a suspect attachment such as a program, batch
file, screensaver or protected content most commonly associated with current
virus trends - hence this email has been quarantined.

There are two main problems with this:

1) There was no attachment.

and

2) There was no attachment.

Now, I realise that that's actually the same problem, but it's such a biggie I thought it needed saying twice.

Further investigation reveals that the filter at the other end quarantines *anything* that contains the pattern:

p*ssword

Shades of not allowing people from Scunthorpe to register on AOL...

Mailsweeper's site makes the bold claim:

MAILsweeper™ for Exchange

Bring the power of the #1 content security solution to internal mail

... sadly, it doesn't go on to say "... by preventing useful communication, and spewing out inaccurate Classifications willy-nilly."

Maybe I should sue...
--
simon

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