...with desktop spam filters that mark up outbound e-mail as being "probably spam", carefully add the vendor's name and "security" product name, and then allow the flippin' spam out onto the network anyway?
Point 1: in 99.99%[1] of cases, spam sent from a desktop machine is sent by malware that has infected the machine without the user's knowledge. The chances are that the "security" product included an antivirus[2] component, which has obviously completely failed to stop the malware.
Point 2: if it is spam, then why the blazes are they sending it out onto the network for everyone else to clean up, rather than stopping it at source? If it isn't spam, they're going to be humiliating the user by labelling it as spam. (Yes, they're almost certainly a Windows user, so they'll be used to being humiliated by their software companies. But they're not used to being humiliated in public.)
Which brings us to Point 3: in any case, the most important thing to do is surely to alert the user that they seem to have malware on the machine? So that, with any luck, they can reclaim the computer from the criminals?
So what are the vendors thinking?
"Let's stick an advert at the top of each outgoing spam that advertises how incompetent we are, how we don't care about making work for other people, and will inform some random unfortunate on the Internet about a virus problem
I won't go as far as to call the vendors spammers -- but I certainly don't want their products anywhere near my machines!
1.No, I don't have any supporting stats -- but I bet that figure's low.
