[pmmail-list] response from support at mind spring

[Simon Bowring]

On Mon, 04 Nov 2002 01:03:46 -0800, Marty Rimpau wrote:

>I want anti-virus protection....

I haven't followed this thread in much detail, but provided 
you have your Dr Sols "on-access" scanner enabled (or whatever 
DrSols call it), you will be protected from viruses!

PMMail stores emails in "raw" text format with any attachment 
(i.e. potential viruses) mime-encoded (e.g. as base64 text or 
whatever).  In this state any virus cannot infect your machine, 
you need to extract/run it. If you were to try to extract an 
attachment containing a virus, the on-access scanner will kick 
in and detect it; it won't allow the viral file to be created 
(let alone run).

All our users here rely on (Sophos') on-access scanning, to remain
virus-free - we do not scan email, because we currently see no 
requirement!

If you are running outlook or outlook express, there is a stronger 
case to be made for running an email scanner, because these products 
can be persuaded to run (e.g.) code in html emails - however PMMail 
will *not* do this.

Bottom line is that the combination of PMMail + any decent on-access 
virus scanner (obviously with up-to-date virus defs) should give 
sufficient protection for all but the most paranoid users.

Simon

- pmmail-list - The PMMail Discussion List ---------------------------
To POST to the list, send your message to:
pmmail-list@blueprintsoftwareworks.com

To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to mdaemon@bmtmicro.com 
with the first line of the message body being...
UNSUBSCRIBE pmmail-list@blueprintsoftwareworks.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------