setting up a central outlook disclaimer in Linux

hi guys.does anyone know how to set up disclaimers in outlook on a linux server without having to intercept people's emails to append the disclaimer?thanks

3 Replies

well.. i never have tried to do something like this, but a google turned up this

http://www.seaglass.com/postfix/faq.html
> 11. How can I add or append a disclaimer (or other text) to the bottom of every email that gets sent from my mail server?

By design this is not implemented in Postfix directly. It's not the job of an MTA, and it's not as simple a problem as it seems because of MIME and digital signatures. MIME messages have a structure that can be very complex. Digital signatures attest to the fact that a signed message has not been modified. Adding a footer to the bottom of a message, breaks both of these. Some people add short text to the headers of email messages, but the text is not likely to be seen by most users. The real solution is to configure your clients to add whatever text is required.

Having said that, it is possible to configure a content filter that appends the text for you. Follow the directions for configuring Postfix to work with a content filter. Your filter should be MIME aware, and you should be aware that digital signatures will no longer work.

Sooo yes.. if any of your users are using digital sigs, it will break those. If not, I would suggest googleing "content filter postfix footer" and see where to go from there

Let me save you some trouble if you're think about adding legal disclaimers to e-mails automatically: their legal worth is questionable at best and usually just a slightly insulting waste of space.

Here's a good Slate article on them:

http://www.slate.com/id/2101561/

Like knehcsa quoted: signatures and disclaimers should really be done by the MTA.

Now if you're thinking about appending information like most free webmail sites do (ads usually), then you should pursue the content filter as that will give you the most options and flexibility.

Yes, we've all heard the for and against side of disclaimers many times over. The reality is that they do add some additional legal weight in court (I've spoken to lawyers regards this at length), and are insisted upon by management in many cases.

The software you need is altermime:

http://www.pldaniels.com/altermime/

I've not used this with postfix, though have got it working on exim quite happily. Incoming emails are piped through a shell script which runs altermime with the necessary parameters and inserts the 'line noise' onto the email.

Paul (L) Daniels is also very good with support for this software - I've submitted a number of bug reports which have been duely fixed (and have even had personal emails from him alerting me to the fact that the latest release fixes my problem).

Hope this helps

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