On Sunday, July 31, 2005, 7:53:00 PM, Catherine Hampton wrote:
And quality software allows you to have it "your way" -- as I understand it ClamAV 0.9 (we're on 0.84-2) will add an option.
<chuckle> Some ClamAV developers are active on several anti-spam lists and forums, and have been hearing complaints about their anti-phishing filters from some of their best customers/users. Since they *are* reasonable folks, they listened.
I like it, so does Greg --others don't like it; good software let's us choose when possible.
Actually, I like it and regularly recommend it to users who are running SpamBouncer on small company, academic, or ISP mailservers. SB's own anti-virus filters aren't bad for getting the cr*p out of your mailbox, but they do NOT constitute a full AV program, and aren't updated as quickly as a good AV program. Despite my annoyance with one policy decision, I'm not dumb enough not to recognize that ClamAV is a good AV program. (Better than merely good, according to friends of mine who work at other AV companies and should know.)
FWIW We use ClamAV and SpamAssassin, and ClamAV certainly catches a lot of wild viruses for us. We probably also use ClamAV for detecting phishes if that's the default behavior, and that's fine by me too. The more protection the better. But my point is that viruses and phishes are really two very different kinds of things and tools for handling one may not always be appropriate for handling the other.
As Catherine points out there are real-world operational issues that can sometimes occur when these kinds of functions are (unexpectedly) combined in the same application.
Jeff C. -- Don't harm innocent bystanders.