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Story URL: http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39120602,00.htm

Symantec stops frustrating virus-notification alerts
They were wrong, and they were annoying, so now they've been stopped

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Tuesday 11 May 2004

Symantec has shown the way for other antivirus firms to finally end the proliferation of false user email notifications, which wrongly identity the source of a virus and add to the general email deluge swamping users' inboxes.

Users who remain uninfected by computer viruses still often see a huge increase in email traffic as they are inundated with notifications resulting from spoofed email addresses in the 'from:' field that wrongly tell them they've sent a virus when, generally, it is in fact somebody whose address book that they appear in that has been infected.

Some users have been getting so frustrated at the high numbers of such emails that they have been dubbed "as annoying as spam", according to Greg Day, solutions architect at rival antivirus firm McAfee.

Symantec said concerns about system resources and storage as well as employee productivity played a major part in the planning of the product.

During peaks of malware activity, users can receive hundreds of such emails per day but now the latest iteration of the Symantec's SMTP email security solution not only claims to remove the malware but also does away with the bandwidth-sapping, inbox-cluttering email notifications.

McAfee's Day is confident that all major antivirus companies will follow suit -- including his own. However, he added that many corporate customers "as an interim measure have already turned off user alerts".

"It's something we will do with each relevant product as soon as possible," Day told silicon.com, adding that he expects every major antivirus vendor to do likewise, citing vocal end-user frustration at the messages.