Meet Me On The Darknet - Opting Out Of Controlled Computing Environments

Blaming Anti-Virus Companies For Adding To Spam Mess

from the catch-up-with-what's-going-on dept

Wed, Jan 28th 2004 2:10pm — Mike Masnick

I'm sure I'm not the only person who noticed that plenty of the annoying myDoom related messages that found their way into my inbox in the last few days came from anti-virus companies telling me (incorrectly) that I had sent someone a virus. I didn't send anyone the virus. As everyone knows, myDoom works by spoofing the "from" address - just like almost every other virus/worm these days. So, why exactly, do anti-virus companies continue to send out these messages? Found over at Politech is a nice little rant about just how stupid it is that these anti-virus companies are continuing this practice. In fact, the author claims that they're just as bad as spammers. First of all, they know that these viruses and worms are spoofing return addresses - yet they continue to send out such "you've sent a virus" emails, even when they can be pretty sure it's not true. At the very least, they should be smart enough to not send out such a message on viruses that are known to spoof emails. Second, many of these messages include annoying advertising for the anti-virus product itself. Thus, it's unsolicited commercial email advertising - and it even violates the CAN SPAM law by not offering an opt-out. So, from now on, when you get such bogus anti-virus reports, you should report them as spam to the proper authorities.

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9 Comments

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Vegard Riseng, 28 Jan 2004 @ 2:43pm

Antivirus software sending warnings...
You said a guy claimed that this practice by antivirus software of sending "Your mail was infected" messages is just as bad as spamming. I beg to differ. I think it's much worse. Fortunately, the last time my inbox was drowned by these messages I teached my junkmail filter to recognice these "warnings" as spam, and it's been sending "520 - Junk Mail Not Accepted" back ever since.
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Michael Leuchtenburg, 28 Jan 2004 @ 3:16pm

"appropriate authorities"
Who exactly are we supposed to report CAN-SPAM violations to? I've yet to see any information on that.
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Kevin, 28 Jan 2004 @ 6:33pm

Re:

to report CAN-SPAM violations you download the proper forms, print them out, carefully fill them in and then file them under your hampsters habitrail.
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PhuzzyLogic, 29 Jan 2004 @ 7:15am

Re: Re:
After the Hamster cage cleaning, you can try here:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/inbox.htm

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drteknikal (profile), 29 Jan 2004 @ 10:26am

you can turn off the bounce messages...
Rather than blame the anti-virus vendors for including the option to generate a non-delivery report or other bounce messages, why not blame the system administrators who accept the default settings without question?

All the products we work with allow us to modify or disable these messages, which we do. We notify our own internal users when we munge their mail because it was infected, but we don't bother notifying senders that their message wasn't delivered because it was infected or spam.

We looked at the volume during spam or virus outbreaks, and found that the bounce messages were clogging our system more than the spam or viruses. Beyond their being futile, we disabled them because our systems perform better without them.
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tommy, 31 Jan 2004 @ 6:44am

spoof
Hi. I agree with you regarding the spam mail antivirus vendors send with the excuse im infected.
Can you please tell me why the virus can use my address & maildomain to send itself to other users, even know that im not infected ?
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annette, 9 Feb 2004 @ 10:07am

Re:"520 - Junk Mail Not Accepted"
Very interesting. I know how to set the filter, but how do I set the
"520 - Junk Mail Not Accepted" reply??
I'm using Spamcops Webmail, but would be inte3resting in Eudora, too.
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softwares, 18 Oct 2009 @ 6:54am

i am also not happy due to this spam problem.
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Pauly, 18 Feb 2010 @ 12:26pm

I think these emails set the big boys apart from the also-rans. My antivirus of choice did not execute any of these messages, and I just add that to the long list of positive things I have to say about them.
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