Question: Do we block viruses?
Author: Joseph Tam
Date: July 13, 2004
For the most part, yes. Our Email policy here is to reject Email with potentially
harmful Email attachments. The sender (if the sending information is not
forged) ought to be given notice of why the Email was rejected. Since the
rejection happens during the mail session, spoofed (forged) Email headers
are not used and the owner of the forged Email sender won't get Email.
Senders who inadvertantly send attachments which we reject will be referred
to a URL which explains the situation. For example, if someone tries to Email
an attachment called "bad.exe" to one of our users, they will be referred to Rejected:
see http://www.math.ubc.ca/php/Reject/?Attach=bad.exe
The intended recipient will not be given any notice that mail with
potentially harmful contents was turned away.
It is important to note that bad attachmment filtering goes both ways --
MathNet users won't be able to send out attachment types that have been deemed
to be potentially harmful.
If you own a Windows workstation, UBC also has a site-license for an anti-virus
product that can be installed, free of charge, onto your workstation. Please ask
the IT staff for details.
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