Thor Larholm wrote: >> 2. In a broader view, notifications ARE currently the >> problem rather than a solution. > > I think we all recognize the fundamental truth that AV notifications > are pure marketing. They contain no instructions on removing the > virus and only serve to spread FUD. Somewhere sometime, a marketer at > an AV company thought "hey, let's get new customers by notifying > people that send the virus!", implemented it and everybody followed > suit since "everybody is doing it, we might as well also". Think back to the beginning. Before viruses emailed themselves out, back when viruses attached themselves to otherwise legitimate EXEs, DOCs(macro viruses), etc. In those days when I implemented a virus scanner, I didn't notify people initially (long story, it was a hacked together solution), I started getting complaints that email with attachments wasn't making it through. In this context, virus notifications were a positive thing. Next in the evolution we had viruses that emailed themselves out, wasn't Melissa one of the first? At any rate, in the beginning, viruses emailed out with a legitimate "MAIL FROM" address, so even then, notifications typically went to the correct sender, although in this case notifying the recipient wasn't very effective. -- Dave Warren, Email Address: dave.warren@devilsplayground.net Cell: (403) 371-3470 Fax: (403) 371-3471 Toll free: (888) 371-3470 Vonage: (817) 886-0860 ICQ: 17848192 AIM: devilspgd Yahoo!: devilspgd MSN/PASSPORT: dave.warren@devilsplayground.net
