We have had a few email viruses come in and noticed they are all from a pop3 email account hosted with HMS.

We were surprised when HMS advised: "the email messages are not scanned for viruses. "

We, perhaps wrongly, thought full AV was fairly standard these days on mailservers and surprised HMS don't have virus checking on their customer pop3 mail as standard.

Was everyone else aware of this?.

HMS can offer AV pop3 scanning but at a cost of $12 per pop3 account. That could get very expensive. One option we have is installing a mailserver with av scanning on our HMS Windows VPS but have doubts the VPS could handle this. Anyone doing this?

As long as your clients are using a decent anti virus program, any viruses that come through email won't be a very big deal The amount of processing power to scan every message server side that comes through the HMS mail servers is extreme. I actually agree with HMS stance on not providing this, as it would bog down the mail servers. SmarterMail 6.0 has alot of features like this built in. You might want to try it on your VPS. Plus I have found it is very conservative with memory usage, especially when compared to SM 4 and SM 5.

Jamie - It would be nice if HMS could offer AV scanning option per hosting account/domain rather than each individual pop3 account.

I will do some checking but I believe that to be an incorrect statement. AV scans take place in the SPOOL folder but not the individual domains folders because if a virus is found there it wipes your mail for the day.

As a matter of fact I'm sure of it - AV scanning happens as he message is received. The only time this fails is when he spool grows to an unmanageable level and AV doesn't have time tos can them all before they are delivered.

I don't think they are scanned. Across a number of HMS accounts (completely separate accounts/hosting packages) we have seen virus emails and its increasing. The body content is typically:

=======================================

Dear Customer!

Thank you for ordering at our online store.
Your order: Sony VAIO A1133651A, was sent at your address.
The tracking number of your postal parcel is indicated in the document attached to this letter.
Please, print out the postal label for receiving the parcel.

Internet Store.

Todays viruses:

========================================

Subject: You've received a postcard

Good day.

Your family member has sent you an ecard from 123greetings.com.

Send free ecards from 123greetings.com with your choice of colors, words and music.

Your ecard will be available with us for the next 30 days.

If you wish to keep the ecard longer, you may save it on your computer or take a print.

To view your ecard, open zip attached file.

Such obviously bogus content should be filtered as spam regardless of attachments long before it gets to Grandma Betty.

Viruses are the client's responsibility, not the hosting company's. Of course you wouldn't see any of those come through if you just enabled grey listing in smartermail. Its like turning your mail server into a vegas nightclub. Spammers don't like waiting behind the velvet rope, they give up and go elsewhere.

Hi Jamie
If this is the case any idea why so many are making it through?






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Dear Microsoft Customer,

Starting 12/11/2009 the ‘Conficker’ worm began infecting Microsoft customers unusually rapidly. Microsoft has been advised by your Internet provider that your network is infected.

To counteract further spread we advise removing the infection using an antispyware program. We are supplying all effected Windows Users with a free system scan in order to clean any files infected by the virus.

Please install attached file to start the scan. The process takes under a minute and will prevent your files from being compromised. We appreciate your prompt cooperation.

Regards,
Microsoft Windows Agent #2 (Hollis)
Microsoft Windows Computer Safety Division