This is a rant.<\/p>\n
The recent MyDoom<\/a> viruses have been causing me annoyance. Not because my system can be infected by them, because it can’t – it’s not Windows. Not even because I have received a large number of emails containing these viruses from infected individuals – I haven’t; as far as I can tell, I haven’t actually received even one<\/i> infected message in this way. (Actually, that might not be true, they could all have been caught in my spam trap … but I haven’t noticed any.)<\/p>\n So what am I complaining about?<\/p>\n Well, it’s the continual stream of “The message you sent to bob@place.com was infected with a virus – please check your system!” I have had loads<\/i> of these.<\/p>\n This is how it works:<\/p>\n So, you see the problem. The corporate anti-virus system is replying to the supposed-sender of a message which they know has been generated by a virus that fakes the sender<\/i>. Not even remotely helpful and probably doing more harm than good since it generates lots of unnecessary email messages. In fact, some of these “you have sent us a virus” messages are more than just a simple notification – they are bordering on full-page advertisements for the anti-virus software in question. Given that this message is commercial and is, by definition, going to someone who has no previous relationship to the company, I expect this meets most people’s definition of spam<\/i>.<\/p>\n I have now decided to write to postmaster@wherever.com whenever I receive one of these notifications. I am asking them to configure their system so that these notifications are not sent. It is an option on every setup that I am aware of, but often defaults to ‘on’ simply because the anti-virus companies realise that this is good advertising. (“Hey, Bob, this FooSoft Anti-Virus seems to be detecting loads of viruses – why don’t we<\/i> use that??”) If the notification is particularly ‘spammy’, I am copying my messages to the anti-virus company too.<\/p>\n OK, rant over … but if you’ve got me in your address-book – make sure your system is clean!<\/p>\n Updated Monday 02.02.2004 19:24<\/b>: The article Martin refers to in his comment is this one<\/a> and it’s discussed on Slashdot here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a rant. The recent MyDoom viruses have been causing me annoyance. Not because my system can be infected by them, because it can’t – it’s not Windows. Not even because I have received a large number of emails containing these viruses from infected individuals – I haven’t; as far as I can tell,… (read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n