Lesson plan

MailScanner

MailScanner is an open source email security system for use on Unix email gateways and was first released in 2001. It protects against viruses, spam, malware, and phishing. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License. The original author, Julian Field, won the 2004 Open Source Award from UKUUG for the product. Worldwide, the software is estimated to be process over eighty billion emails per month, with millions of downloads. Internet service providers and mobile telephone networks are included in this list of users. More recently, anti-phishing measures have been introduced. The software spots attempts at obfuscating URLs (for example, to lure the user into thinking they are signing into their bank, when in reality they are using an impostor web site) and modifies the email with a suitable warning. As of January 2014 the project is sponsored by the lead developer Jerry Benton who is the founder of Mailborder Systems. As of January 2018 the primary developer is Shawn Iverson of the eFa Project. The project's other major contributor is Mark Sapiro of the GNU Mailman project.

Back to article

Article summary

MailScanner is an open source email security system for use on Unix email gateways and was first released in 2001. It protects against viruses, spam, malware, and phishing. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License. The original author, Julian Field, won the 2004 Open Source Award from UKUUG for the product. Worldwide, the software is estimated to be process over eighty billion emails per month, with millions of downloads. Internet service providers and mobile telephone networks are included in this list of users. More recently, anti-phishing measures have been introduced. The software spots attempts at obfuscating URLs (for example, to lure the user into thinking they are signing into their bank, when in reality they are using an impostor web site) and modifies the email with a suitable warning. As of January 2014 the project is sponsored by the lead developer Jerry Benton who is the founder of Mailborder Systems. As of January 2018 the primary developer is Shawn Iverson of the eFa Project. The project's other major contributor is Mark Sapiro of the GNU Mailman project.

Key claims

  1. release date: 2001 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "2001". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1332388554

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.