sendmail disclaimer to outgoing email

[Deron Meranda]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:02:10 -0600, Gustavo Seabra <seabra at ksu.edu> wrote:
> Ben Halicki wrote:
> >Does anyone know of a good way to add a disclaimer to all outgoing mail
> >using sendmail?

Before I tell you HOW to do it, read this first...

I continue to strongly urge postmaster's not to automatically
mangle any email message body.  Aside from the reasons shown
in the mentioned URL, there are TECHNICAL issues too..

1. It can interfere with encrypted or signed email messages.
2. If you don't correctly follow the letter of the MIME law,
  you can easily break file attachments, multiparts, etc.
3. Not all messages are plain text, such as HTML mail or
   even SOAP messages.  Adding disclaimers consistently can
   be very difficult.
4. Even those that are "plain text" may be encoded (such as
  with base-64), which makes it harder to correctly append text.
5. Most disclaimers are completely inappropriate for posting
  messages to public mailing lists.  Thus, disclaimers, if
  present should be included by the sender (perhaps by a signature)
  rather than automatically added to all outgoing messages.
6. You should not plaster your own disclaimers across email
  that originated from outside (such as on a message "bounce").


HOWEVER, that being said, if you have no choice and must
do something...here's some ideas.

1. Try adding information in mail headers instead.  You can
  add all kinds of headers, like X-Organization, X-blahblah
  without most of the technical difficulties.  It's very easy for
  sendmail to add headers.

2. If you must edit the message *body*, and you're using
  sendmail; your best bet is to learn the milter interface to
  sendmail.  A "milter" is a term short for mail filter.  It
  runs as a separate process and sendmail can loop all
  messages through it (via socket connections), and the
  milter can do all kinds of things, including mangling the
  body however it sees fit.  In addition to the sendmail
  documentation, also see:

  http://www.milter.org/
  http://www.bmsi.com/python/milter.html


And may I also add, please keep your disclaimers short (one
or two lines at most).  If necessary direct the recipient to a
webpage for all the gory fine print.
-- 
Deron Meranda