 |
| No virus found in this message. |
It's unfortunate that this is common practice with so many anti-virus applications. I can understand why they do this, but ultimately it makes the recipients of these e-mails less safe because it gives them a false sense of security.
Anti-virus publishers do this because it gives them an opportunity to advertise their product in every e-mail you send, at no expense to them. However, since there's no mechanism for the recipient of the message to test the validity of the notification, it does nothing to enhance security.
There are many opportunities between the sender and the recipient to inject malicious code into an attachment. The notification could be faked by simply pasting it into the message manually or by the tricks of a malicious program.
If people receiving these messages falsely believe that the notification is affording them security, because of these precautions taken by the sender, then they may open a malicious piece of code thinking it is safe.
I would encourage anti-virus publishers to make it clear in their notifications that it is simply a banner ad and affords the recipient no added security. If your anti-virus application allows you to disable the banners, I would suggest disabling it.
The best way to be safe is to use an e-mail hosting service that performs virus checking prior to you downloading your mailbox. This can also be accomplished in self-hosted environments using a number of open-source tools which are compatible with popular e-mail servers. Additionally, it's advisable to use a virus scanner on your local machine. ClamAV is a popular, multi-platform, open-source anti-virus program. Finally, it's never advisable to run executable files (programs, screensavers, batch files, etc.) that you receive as an e-mail attachment regardless of how protected you are.
