For us the 1% just happened to be one of our employees mother. She was receiving those "what was that strange message you sent?" for at least 3 months from people. It wasn't until she sent a message here, got one of our virus notifications and then eventually asked me about it, that the problem got cleared up. This was some 70ish year old woman that uses her computer for e-mail, small time web surfing, the occasional online banking session, and the perfect target for virus writers.
For me it's more then worth it if you can help one person from sending viruses to the rest of us. If I get accused of being a spammer for sending those notifications, then so be it. Don't send me viruses and I won't send you those notifications in the first place. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Harmer, Michael Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 6:32 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Virus Notifications to Sender? First, let me say that I understand what your saying if you are saying that you are concerned about the 1% and wish to help make the internet a better place by assisting them to control viruses on their computers. Now for my POV The one percent are basically causing the hardliners to spam the rest of us. Because most of the virus mail you receive is spoofed, leaving on the warning send back is the same as spamming. Basically you will be accusing someone of having a virus that they do not have, generating bad will between your company and the one you just spammed. I am speaking from person experience. One company late last week, sent us 5 e-mails indicating that we were infected with the active virus at that time. We were not infected, but because we are good admins, we sat down and verified that we were not infected, wasting our time. We knew the virus lied about the FROM address, but we checked anyway just to be safe. We then called the offending party(The company that spammed us). They told us we were infected and we deserved to get the message. Needless to say, we informed them what the virus does, and they said they could do nothing about the messages as they wanted to stop others from spreading infection. BTW, did I mention that their e-mail said that we wasted their time because we did not have a e-mail scanner on our systems? Needless to say, I will probably never do business with that ISP. They proved that they did not care about corporate relations, proper etiquette or virus control in general. The other problem with this is that the hardliners are propagating a 99% false positive system. If my AV system was that bad, I would get a new one. Heck my spam system does better that 3% false positive. What is worse is that the false positives are going to people who did not 'sign up' in the first place.(Hence the spam title) Basically, to me, this comes down to a matter of fairness. If the hardliners believe it is ok to call 100 people 'jerks' just because one of them has a foul mouth, go right ahead, but they will find it hard to make friends. If on the other hand, they instead pay attention to what your receiving and respond only where you have proof of 'jerkiness', they will have no problem making friends and they will make the community much happier. (No one likes a jerk) Michael --------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Hummert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 11:54 AM To: Exchange Discussions Yea but what about that 1% that has no clue their sending out viruses? <SNIP> _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&; lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
