[Mimedefang] Viruses: Bounce or Discard?

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Monday, September 29, 2003 3:14 PM -0500 Ben Kamen <bkamen at benjammin.net>
wrote:

> Again - agreed. One the bills start piling up and people start declaring
> bankruptcy because of MicroSoft Malware.. (I can hear it now, "don't let
> Microsoft affect your good credit rating.. call So and So Lawyers today.")

And note that the idea isn't MS-specific. If someone with another OS starts
spreading malware (or better, any non-plaintext attachment), then they should
pay a "risk" fee based on how likely that MIME type or filename pattern is to
be malware or spam. Executables and HTML would get charged a premium, zip
files much less (though not zero given recent virus behavior).

An ISP or IT department can do cost analysis based on what their abuse and
virus teams do and correlate it with attachment types to determine what to
bill. Update the pricing once a quarter or so to reflect the trends.