Legality issue : Not only is it legal for vsnl to run dumb or intellegent antivirus scanner software at the sever, but the current law also allows them and the government agencies to read any email comming through the sever, as a part of "security" measures.
Remeber, even in a privacy concerned place like usa, the government runs software like carnivore, which scanns every email going through the usa internet backbone and use it for intellegency and counter-intellegency matters. So, if, for example, you have your emial server in USA, every one of your emails, to whoever they may be addressed, is scanned by a highly intellegent softwaere, and if considered of interest, a copy of the same is forwarded to CIA / FBI for reading and analysing.
(I dont know where ilug server is, but if it is in usa, with the word carnivore in it, it will be picked up by the software for detailed reading)
Regards Saswata ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amish Mehta" amish@ownmail.com To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 9:24 PM Subject: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] vsnl & virus scan
First of all I have no idea if VSNL does what 'Saswata Banerjee & Associates' pointed out in his last email to this list.
But I think its not legal to do that(even if email has virus). Because I think email should not be scanned(even if by a 'DUMB' program) without permission of sender or receiver. As most of emails do not have virus and may be official emails and it would be considered as intrusion to someones privacy. Would like others opinion. Thanks.
Amish.
Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:
An interesting thing I have noticed recently is that vsnl servers are
scanning outgoing emails for virus affected attachement and deleting
them. I