Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Virus Companies: Tenacious Spammers
jaroslav writes "There is a great article over at Attrition about the problem of anti-virus related spam. I don't know if we should all start reporting this to the government, but telling the companies themselves that this should stop might get some results."
Not three hours after this comment, someone mailed this to Declan's Politech list, a cheat sheet for computer illeterate journalists angling for something to stay more relevant than the typewriters they still swear by. And then the very next day, we see three different articles with variations on this very topic. Five bucks says the next issue of eWeek borrows in their next issue as well.
Yes, as always, none of the stories credited Politech, though the names of the authors who borrow liberally are always the same. And Politech didn't credit Slashdot, where the Politech submitters borrow a full half of their stories with equal disregard for journalistic integrity. Indeed, the only time Politech credits Slashdot is when they believe Slash has said something stupid. These reporters are hooked on the easy source of stories, yet trash it publicly for fear others will find the tool that's kept them from having to do actual reporting anymore.
I may be here to take Linux away from you, but you can't argue that I don't give something back. You hate me. But you love me too, and you hate that as well. Think of it, you see me just the way others see Slashdot.
If you'd like to track Politech's ongoing plagiarism of Slashdot, jump on their free mailing list and have a laugh. Watch the submissions. Watch each story jump from Slash to Politech (search the comments after each new Politech post and you'll find the original +4 or +5 comment 4 times in 5), then check the NY Times, Barron's, and Ziff Davis Publishing for the same authors publishing borrowed stories the very next issue. They do it like clockwork, because these "tech" journalists don't realize that we're on the internet too.
~Darl
At my last job at a public uni, obviously any and all worms and viruses slammed us hard. It was soon apparent to make support calls more mangeable as well as the lessen the pure amount of crap on the network that we had to configure our mail server virus package to send those announcement "you have or were sent an infection" messages to /dev/null. Some users might not get the warning they needed I suppose but quickly one message would turn into thousands just for one infected user. To the bit bucket with them! It helps.
"What we do in life echoes in eternity." Maximus Decimus Meridius
No kidding. I used to pass the emails along to the end users. Not any more. After this last worm (MyDoom), I became fed up with having to explain to the users why they were receiving the emails. As the parent poster did, I just throw them away. Problem solved. As for the people who allow their AV gateways to send back auto responses, they should be shot. Every time I receive one of those emails from postmaster@somewhere, I fire back a nasty email tell them to cut it out.
The author of this article seems to think that the AV companies are the one to blame for this. In fact, every AV product I've ever worked with at the mail server level has allowed you to turn this functionality off. Any decent mail server admin should be doing this themselves. It's the same kind of ignorance and stupidity that allows 3 year old exploits to continue to propagate.
Certainly whoever sets up a server and leaves this enabled is stupid or careless, but I think the companies have some responsibility too. The option should at least be disabled by default. Enabling it should cause some sort of warning. Better yet it shouldn't be there. Why put such a dangerous feature in a program?
Good analogy, but I think you seriously overestimate Dubya's powers of reasoning in this case...
No, he's saying - as hard as it is to believe - that Bush is smarter than a mail server.
Personally, I'd be pissed at your parents for naming you "postmaster".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?