"service improvement"

[winterbadger]

received this morning:

An email was sent to you that we have identified as containing a virus. Below find the details of the infected message: (details deleted)

To protect you from destructive Internet viruses, your Cox High Speed Internet service now includes a free anti-virus security enhancement. This security enhancement detects and prevents the delivery of most viruses transmitted via email so that your personal computers will not be harmed.

This is an auto-generated message. Please do not reply. If a known virus is detected the service will delete the entire email message and send a notification to you explaining the email has been removed. The email notification message will be sent from Cox Virus Monitor. Update: Starting in July, Cox will no longer be sending virus notification messages. This service improvement is based on customer feedback regarding messages of this nature and is part of our continuing efforts to provide the best security and overall customer experience. (emphasis added)

Apparently the antivirus service was launched in April. I've never gotten one of these messages before, but I'm a bit troubled at the idea that mail will be getting deleted in the future when this bot decides it's infected and I'll have no intimation whatsoever. *Not* telling me something is a "service improvement"?

Comments

[kathygnome.livejournal.com]

The issue is that there are so many viruses on high speed internet connections that they're clogging the networks. So companies are starting to crack down. I don't know if Cox is doing it, but there's a few companies that are just turning off internet access to people who are infected until they fix the issue.

[winterbadger]

That's fine, but I'm disturbed that they're now refusing to tell me what messages they're deleting because they think they might have viruses. I'm also a bit bothered that they never saw fit to tell anyone about this "service" before they implemented it(just as they never told anyone they were implementing spam filters, just set them up and started deelting messages without telling users or allowing them to configure the fileter for their account).

What's most disturbing, though, is that they claim their move to stop informing users of deleted messages is a result of feedback from users. This despite the fact that their webpage describing the virus software (once you know to look for it) has instructions on how to configure a filter in our email program to trash messages telling you about deleted emails). Did huge numbers of customers really write in and say, "This is too much trouble! We don't want to know! Just delete all the messages, and we'll trust you to be right!" I wonder.

[kathygnome.livejournal.com]

Given my experience doing support for a living, that's probably exactly what they did. That or they called and told someone they needed to remove a virus. I get that at least once a month from one of the users here who doesn't (and won't) understand the difference between a active virus warning (big red screen on the PC) and a report that it's been deleted (email that says so).

[winterbadger]

So we get services tailored exclusively to the lowest common denominator? Lovely. Why not remove the keyboard entirely and replace it with a yes/no button? Or just cut off user input altogether and just stream whatever content the system administrator deems interesting and useful. This is approaching the discussion I had with a sys admin at NASSP who (without thinking) admitted that he'd really rather users not have access to the system, because that way he'd be able to keep it running smoothly...