[H-GEN] Spam from the anti-virus companies

[Andrae Muys]

David de Groot wrote:

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> 
> On 10/02/2004, at 2:52 PM, Greg Black wrote:
> 
>> I've been getting pretty cross lately with the number of idiotic
>> warnings I've received from the bottom-feeders in the anti-virus
>> pond.
>>
>> Far too many systems are setup so that this stupid software just
>> sends out bogus warnings about virus-laden email that they claim
>> to have protected their users against.  This is despite the fact
>> that almost all such mail comes with a clearly-forged sender who
>> certainly sent no such email.
>>
>> The worst of these fools also kindly forwards the bloody virus
>> to the so-called sender, thus adding to the problem.
>>
>> On top of that, all this software is clearly guilty of spamming,
>> as it all includes advertising for the AV product that was the
>> source of the email.
>>
>> There's a nice rant about this here: http://tinyurl.com/2cqcg
> 
> 
> There's been a big thread on this on BugTraq.  Unfortunately the pointy 
> haired bosses seem to like this "feature" of anti-virus mail scanners 
> and thus insist that it is used (despite it being a complete waste of 
> resources).
> 

In which case they are deliberately attempting a denial of service 
attack against your email service.  There are laws against such 
behaviour.  They cannot claim to be unaware that modern viruses forge 
sender addresses, and as such cannot claim the bounce is a good faith 
warning of possible infection.

I view this behaviour as a crime, and if my personal levels of bounces 
reach sufficient to interfere with my use of email, I will treat it as such.

Andrae

-- 
  Andrae Muys    <andrae.muys at braintree.com.au>
  Engineer       Braintree Communications
  "Now lets say ... I do something stupid making it no longer possible
   for me to run b at p.  For example the computer has been run over by a
   truck while sitting out on the curb during an ice storm."
       seen on erlang-qustions.