Administrivia: Content Scanners, List bounces, Port ##s

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () nfr com>]

Many of you now are behind virus scanning firewalls or
"content scanners" that look for appropriate content.
That's very nice and it's good to be diligent about security,
etc, but - if you're going to deploy such systems _and_ be
on a large mailing list, you've got a responsibility to make
sure that the scanning systems work and are not an
irritant to everyone else on the list.

A recent poster (commenting on a product) said that it
periodically goes "t.i.t.s.' up" (I've had to break this up with
periods so it'll get through) - that message has triggered
about 15 "content scanners" most of which have bounced
their messages into my mailbox, as the list moderator
(correct behavior, but stupid) rather than the sender.
However, I find this unacceptable. I've also got about 65
messages in my inbox that claim they have stopped a
virus when in fact they appear to have stopped _discussion_
of a virus.

In the future, if you are behind a content scanner or
virus scanner and suddenly notice that you are no
longer getting firewall-wizards, go to:
http://www.nfr.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
and see if you're unsubscribed. That's my form of
content scanning: if your spam blocker spams _me_
or anyone else on the list, you can re-subscribe once
you've fixed it.

Other administrivia: In the future I will not be carrying
postings along the lines of "what do scans on this port ## mean?"
or "does anyone know of problems with product X,Y,Z?" where
the product is a widely known product. There have been an
infinity of discussions on the 'net as to Checkpoint this
versus Cisco that and I will only push through questions
that are new and interesting, or pertain to products that
haven't been widely discussed.

Lastly, since this is a security mailing list, I will continue
to _NOT_ push through postings that are written in or
contain HTML other than links. In general if I get HTML postings,
I assume they are spam and don't even read them (reading
Outlook's idea of HTML is not my idea of fun) to see if there
is valuable content.

Yours for a secure Internet,
mjr.
---
Marcus J. Ranum, Chief Technology Officer, NFR Security, Inc.
Work:   http://www.nfr.com
Play: http://www.ranum.com


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