Ian Porter wrote:

> As to whether these mails were really infected, read on.
> As I said earlier, I sent these infected mails to Kevin Johnson and Al
> Thompson, who both wanted to test their systems.
> Kevin, you obviously got yours ok.  But Al didn't.  The reason?  His ISP
> intercepted the mails, and refused to forward them to Al, because of their
> virus content. Then they told me what they'd done.
> I also got a blast from Xtra (which is an ISP you'll be familiar with,
> Kevin) about disseminating viruses.
> So there's no doubt that they were infected.
> Therefore I have to say that, while AVG might be a very good AV prog, it
> won't necessarily alert you to the presence of a bug in an email, even when
> you manipulate the infected files to some extent.
> And to what extent you can safely manipulate infected files, or harbor them,
> but still maintain a clean system, is somewhat of an unknown quantity.
> So, annoying as the damn thing is, I think I'll have to stick with Norton
> for the time being.
> And that really bugs me.

I don't disagree with you, Ian. But I guess I'm a bit cynical. To me, what
really counts is that my system is not damaged by viruses and is not used to
attack others. I don't really need my antivirus program to jump up and down and
wave all the time to show that it's working. That looks like advertising,
designed to promote brand awareness and make the user feel happy because his
antivirus software is apparently proving its worth.

The average user is aware that viruses exist, doesn't know much about them, and
is scared of them. So they are impressed if Norton shows that it is catching
some. But most don't know whether their virus database is up-to-date or how to
do an update. So they are unaware of the real risks and have a false sense of
security. Also, they think Nortons is the best because it's the one they hear
most about. They wouldn't choose AVG, Antivir, Kaspersky, etc, because they
haven't heard of them.

IMHO, several antivirus programs can do the job but people don't keep them up to
date and don't have program settings that give the best protection. These are
the critical factors, along with good commonsense. And the ultimate antivirus
protection includes a carefully implemented backup regime.

I'm also skeptical about some reports of  virus detection. I once investigated a
known safe email rejected by a network virus protection program. (This was in
the time of Melissa and the Love Bug.) Eventually, I narrowed it down to the
words "all addresses" in the body of the message.  *Antivirus overkill!*  In
other words, some network administrators err a little too much on the side of
caution.

Each to his own. For me it doesn't matter if a burglar walks down my street, but
if he tries to enter my house, then I need my alarm to work.

Cheers, Kevin

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