Today I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the following people:
- The dumbasses that waste their time with inventing new mail worms.
You guys do not do any harm to me directly, because I know how to protect myself from you and your effluvia. However you still deserve some credits for my current mood. (Read below) - The super-duper companies and free software projects that sell (or give away) virus scanners that can be plugged into mail servers to scan in- and outgoing mail.
Please, please stop shipping software that behaves bogus: If your software finds a mail that is possibly infected by some virus, it must not inform the person, whose email address is mentioned in the From: header of the mail. (It's the wrong address in 99,9% of all cases.) Instead either don't inform anyone or use the address that is mentioned in Return-Path: header.
Due to this misbehaviour my inbox is plastered with literally hundreds of bounce messages, which inform me that I have distributed electronic mail infected by a virus.
If you in fact are a super-duper company the sells virus scanners or if you belong to a free software project that gives away scanners for free, you might think that I'm nuts because your scanner does not generate any mail. In this case, I beg you pardon. Nevertheless you should then take care that your product comes with installation instructions that tell people, how to configure their stuff, so that I don't have to suffer from those bounce messages. - The faithful users of Microsoft Outlook Express.
I might start writing a longish rant about you, but I'm sure other people have already written enough about your bad habits.
And as if the spammers out there knew about my desperation, they today offered me what I need most urgently now: Subject: Order Valium Online Today. Thank you for saving my day.
Update (2004-01-29): People have been commenting that relying on the Return-Path: headers does not make much sense, because it is most likely faked as well. That is quite obviously correct, but preferring Return-Path: over From: nonetheless makes sense for two reasons: 1) The probability that the return path address is faked is slightly lower than the probability for a faked from address. 2) Using the return path address for directing error messages to is the right way to go. The address in the from field isn't intended for this usage.
And in case you did not already read it, Brian Martin has been ranting on the same topic in more length and better english than my lousy gibberish over here.