some (most? don't know how many) good isp's have their own virus protection in place to scan incoming email.
my isp recently sent me an email notification informing me that they had quarantined a suspected virus in a piece of email from a friend. they said if i wanted to view the suspicious mail, without danger of infecting my computer, i could go to a password-protected web site they have set up for just such a thing. the isp's email also included the name of the virus and the subject header of the quarantined mail.
i did go to the site and accessed the bad email. with that info i was able to contact the guy who "sent it" (i was sure he would have no idea he'd sent the mail to me), and i learned that although he had a coworker install a firewall on his new notebook, he was without an antivirus program!
the coworker was contacted and asked to get a good av program on there pronto, which he did.
per Macafee, the virus was: Friend Greeting.eml (ED)
initially, this friend, when asked if he had an av program, told me he thought he had norton. so i asked if he had been keeping the virus definitions updated?
keeping the who what?, he replied.
soon thereafter it was determined that he had no av protection whatsoever.
what is most unfortunate here, imo, is that a guy like this, who obviously has No Concept of the computer-borne hazards circulating out there, doesn't even begin to think along the lines of his personal responsibility to others, beginning with the folks whose email addresses are found in his outlook express address book.
:)
mark |
