On Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:41:30 AM UTC-4, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2014-03-26, Jon Danniken wrote:

On 03/26/2014 01:36 PM, wrote:

Begin Rant

[snip]

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This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.

http://www.avast.com



You know what's even worse than trolls are those idiots who spam the

name of their antivirus software in every message they post....



And -- it is totally useless as reassurance, as a virus could

easily forge that message while it is infecting things. :-)



A "free from viruses" message from a virus checker which is

local to your machine may be meaningful -- one put on at the sending end

is too easy to forge -- anywhere along the chain. For that matter, it

may get infected after it leaves the machine which put on the "free from

viruses" message. :-)



Enjoy,

DoN.



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And not only that, but "Free from viruses" really only means "free from viruses that Avast is configured to detect." It is an often overlooked fact that the good guys can only stay one step _behind_ the bad guys.