[wellylug] email virus scanners

[Mark Foster]

> Feeding "delivered" email into an MTA for re-delivery is an inherently
> risky task; email that came *to* you but did not have your name on the
> message headers (for example, mailing lists like this) can be easily
> bounced back to the originator by accident.
>
> So just make sure that you read all the warnings in the readme files :-)
> Also consider alternatives to fetchmail like getmail; the prevalance or
> fetchmail is based on two main factors; age and ESR's reputation.
>
> (Having said all that, I use fetchmail myself, so it can't be all that
> bad!)

Indeed there was a rash of misconfigured POP3 Connectors for MS Exchange 
(think the MS equiv of Fetchmail) which cost several businesses several 
thousand dollars. Enough that I wrote an article about it and wound up 
referring people to it fairly regularly:

http://www.blakjak.net/node/125

If you were to configure your linux box to behave similarly through a poor 
fetchmail implementation, you'd likely get yourself into a lot of bother. 
:o)

Its still a practical solution for small businesses and home connections, 
though, as it allows you to use ISP provided services and retain some 
level of reliability over-and-above what you can achieve at home...

Mark.