ISP Virus Protection

**Johanna** · 7th April 2004

My ISP offers a service that holds spam and filters viruses, for free. I have a QL icon for it, because it often grabs legit mail- like order confirmations or newsletters, but you can "approve" addresses permanently. In the last two days, it has picked up 46 infected emails. I can view the headers and text without any risk of harming my computer, from their website. Only a few times did anything get through this first locked door that my Norton had to catch in OE, (second locked door!) I have 14 days to inspect mail on their server before it is automatically deleted. The only complaint I have about their service is their privacy policy. They collect info on all mail I select and refuse.

This service is free- but you have to go to the ISP's website and sign up for it. So many of the computers I've fixed in the last few weeks would have not been infected had they just bothered to sign up. In the area I live in, there is a general computer ignorance. Most of these comps had expired or no virus protection, all were loaded with garbage spyware and then the viruses, and were using our ISP to generate as much infected mail as they could on their cable connections that their owners never thought to turn off, even when it was obvious their computer had slowed down considerably, and were sending mail non stop. I talked every one of them into the eTrust deal, figuring that will keep them from bugging me for at least a year. They all could have saved a lot of grief if they would have had a simple security protocol in place.

There was talk of MS adding automatic virus protection into OE, as well as SP2's two way firewall. I think it's a good thing that we are "dumbing down" security to the lowest common denominator. People who know what they are doing will configure it all their optimal way, anyway. I think that the new user, who buys an out of the box system, should expect those protections built in. But, that day is not here yet, and all we can do is sound like broken records "Do not disable the firewall until I get there!"

Does anybody else use a service like this one for their ISP email? Anybody wanna check and see if you have it available, and just don't know it? Does your ISP do a good job of promoting it as a "service"? I'm pretty sure there are others out there that perform the same services, but not through specific ISPs. Does anybody use any software like that?

Johanna

**markp62** · 7th April 2004

My ISP, Everyone's Internet [dial up and ISDN, no DSL], provides email AV scanning, and I do test it from time to time. I get a notification my hotmail account sent a virus everytime, although I admit at most times it is the EICAR test file.
I end up with a notification of the deleted email, and that is it. The sender gets an email that they sent out a virus.
They have SPAM filtering at no extra cost.
The above is part of their general promotion
Their privacy policy:

Quote:

We support the uncensored flow of information and ideas over the Internet and do not actively monitor subscriber activity under normal circumstances. Similarly, we do not exercise editorial control over the content of any web site, e-mail transmission, newsgroups, or other material created or accessible over or through the services, except for certain proprietary Web sites.

**PeteC** · 7th April 2004

My ISP BTYahoo (British Telecom) scans for viruses and blocks spam (30 days before deletion) by default. Antispam can be turned off, virus scan, by Norton, cannot.

They also have something called AddressGuard which generates disposable email addresses for use on he Web. Haven't explored this yet.