Since the beginning of my Internet existence nearly ten years ago, I have taken a firm stance in my personal rebellion against companies producing anti-virus software. I will, to the best of my ability, try to explain why.Since the beginning of my Internet existence nearly ten years ago, I have taken a firm stance in my personal rebellion against companies producing anti-virus software. I will, to the best of my ability, try to explain why. A recent article written by LAJ in YNOTNews prompted me to once again examine my beliefs about the anti-virus software industry.

I’ve asked myself many times over the years if there are really that many people out there that take pride in causing problems for others online. With more and more companies coming out every day that promise to rid our computers of malicious material, I would say that the number of people producing that material is increasing as well. This, of course, has nothing to do with the number of people on the Net growing each day, but more with the number of manufacturers of software that claim to fight viruses.

Would it not be in the best interest of anti-virus makers to see that every end user received their fair share of data requiring the intervention of their software? If I had a company producing this software, it would be much easier for me to employ people to write viruses that understand them and how to disable them than it would be to employ people that could pinpoint, dismantle and provide solutions for users affected by them.

Who better to explain the problem caused by an exploit than the person that wrote it or discovered it. It would make my company look better by being the first to share a solution to a problem as well, not to mention the ability to stimulate sales by simply producing more material. If only our industry worked this way.

I have a pretty good reason to believe one company in particular that makes a variety of other utilities, has been known in the past to allow its benchmarking software to produce better results for certain processor manufacturers than for others. This of course is not based at all on the actual performance of the device either. I’m sure they didn’t do that out of courtesy. If so, that sure was nice of them! Maybe they can do something nice for the rest of us, and perhaps give all of their employees a two-year vacation. I’ve felt this way for a long time about the anti-virus industry, and that’s why I choose to use my own means of intervention as long as they are possible.

The basic rules are: Don’t open any email attachments unless you are expecting it from someone, don’t activate “install on demand” applets, and try not to use any 3rd party software that doesn’t come from a reputable source. It’s that simple.

Take advantage of the message rules that you can set up if you are a Microsoft Outlook user. I just started using them fairly recently myself. Any messages that contain message attachments are automatically moved to the deleted messages folder. I also have my deleted messages folder set up to be cleared each time Outlook is closed. Messages that I know may contain attachments, such as statements from billing companies or other sources, can be specified for movement into yet another folder.

There are a lot of options to play around with, and everyone that uses Windows on a compatible PC has Microsoft Outlook. The options are endless, and not only that, you can reduce the “visible spam” in your inbox by setting up some simple message rules. I know that Microsoft uses some of the same strategies as my speculations about anti-virus companies, but when it comes to viruses and message handling, I would say Microsoft Outlook is the lesser of two evils.

If I may share just a couple short comments about spam as well… it is another belief of mine that if you get a spam message with an option to be removed from the mailing list, don’t proceed with that method of removal. All you are doing is confirming that the email address they sent the message to is an active one and that means your email address may likely be sold to someone else using email marketing strategies. This, of course, does not apply to everyone, but I would say that 99% of the email you get that you did not subscribe for is being handled this way.

When it comes to viruses, anti-virus software and spam, I believe abstinence is the best policy.

There is no solid evidence to accommodate the statements above. They are merely my beliefs and personal speculations.

Jeff Rust is Vice President / Support Services for Platinum-Media, Inc. and can be reached at jac@platinum-media.com or on ICQ# 103925067.