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GMail and Viruses

I’m an almost happy user of GMail for quite a while, almost because it still doesn’t work properly with my browser of choice. On the other hand I can use it through IMAP so I’m happier than with my own ISP’s mailserver which is reachable only from inside their network.

One thing I can’t really get, though, is how comes that I receive tons of viruses on GMail. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the spam filter that they provide and it’s really nice, even though I do receive huge amount of spam every day (when I used to use GMail through POP and a local IMAP server, I received a good 100 e-mail messages a day that were unfiltered by GMail and detected by SpamAssassin).

From time to time a new rush of spam arrives, and GMail is not prepared to filter it, but probably because of the huge pool of users marking the stuff as spam, it is usually taken care of quickly. But viruses don’t seem to get filtered that easily.

Since last week I received a number of viruses – or at least I assume they are viruses – with “Hi” or “Re: Hi” or similar subjects, a few random lines and then an attachment. They still arrive even today.

The funny thing is that when this kind of problems arise on a mailbox I fetch with GMail from a POP server, they are able to filter it out, although they then send me a mail telling me the message was left there for that reason, which is just as annoying.

I’d like to know what is up with GMail and viruses, maybe it’s just a method to remember that you should be using a decent operating system and/or pay money for an antivirus (up to you decide what is better ;)).

Comments 2
  1. As I run my own mailserver I know the problem with malware. But I have to say that greylisting keeps away 99% of those buggers and clamav could be sent to vacation here.The downside: It takes some time until mail arrives.

  2. Given that GMail webapp doesn’t scan for viruses until you look at that email, perhaps Google doesn’t scan viruses for imap users.That would be scary though…

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