Running amavisd-new on MX hosts?

[Dino Edwards]

E-mail should never be quarantined unless there is a mechanism for the recipient to release those messages from quarantine themselves. You never want to be responsible for an e-mail NOT reaching its intended recipient. People get very upset when they don't receive e-mail they believe they should receive. If the e-mail is important enough and not receiving it caused them harm or financial loss, they will take you to court. 

Let's face it, the decision whether or not an e-mail is legitimate or not is made by a machine. That mechanism is not always perfect and it will yield  false positives from time to time. The ultimate decision of whether to keep or discard that message should be made by the recipient not the machine.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: amavis-users [mailto:amavis-users-
> bounces+dino.edwards=mydirectmail.net at amavis.org] On Behalf Of Rich
> Wales
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 11:52 AM
> To: amavis-users at amavis.org
> Subject: Re: Running amavisd-new on MX hosts?
> 
> > i would not do this.  to some extent, one might argue that it depends
> > on what exactly happens to the mail after it's processed by amavis,
> > but it's unlikely to benefit you much to now have two instances of
> > amavis to curate, two additional places in which mail may accumulate,
> > two more services on hosts with more direct internet exposure, etc,
> > etc.  what actual problem would moving your content filter service to
> > your mx service hosts solve?  for me, the answer is none.
> 
> My assumption is that if I were to run SpamAssassin and amavisd-new on my
> MX hosts -- which, BTW, are cloud servers -- this would keep junk (or
> suspected junk) from tying up network bandwidth on my main system.
> 
> > i would also encourage you to consider not quarantining spam.
> > instead, mark it as appropriate, and then deliver it to a junk mailbox
> > using something like sieve.
> 
> Please explain further.  I understand that different people disagree on
> whether spam should be quarantined, or delivered after being flagged.
> What are your reasons for opposing the quarantine approach?  What do
> other list participants think about this?
> 
> Rich Wales
> richw at richw.org