RSSGoogle Adds Virus Scanning to Gmail
By Nate Mook | Published December 1, 2005, 4:50 PM
Google on Wednesday silently added a new feature to its Gmail service: virus scanning. The company will now check all incoming and outgoing e-mail attachments to keep users' inboxes safe. By scanning outbound attachments, Google can also keep viruses from proliferating by way of Gmail.
"If a virus is found in an attachment you've received, our system will attempt to remove it, or clean the file, so you can still access the information it contains. If the virus can't be removed from the file, you won't be able to download it," reads a notice in the Gmail Help Center.
Excelente idea. Algo que estaba faltando al gran conglomerado de gmail.
Ya se está cerca de cubrir todos los frentes. Exitos y no bajen la guardia.
Valentin
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|"2. How do I sign up?
You can get a Gmail account if you're invited by someone who already has one."
can someone plz invite me, hiker2k3@yahoo.com
i dont know anyone who has gmail, so an invitation would be grately appreciated.
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|thanks
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|Guys...
I'm worried.
Really.
Where's ServerMechanic? I haven't seen a single post about Google being too big in this topic yet.
Someone give him a call and make sure he's still alive, k?
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|Google is Satan.
There.
Feel better now? At least his sentiment is here.
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|Even if he dies, his message will live on in all of us.
*tear*
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|lmao...
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|What VIRUS ENGINE are they using? Some people will need that information as a small convinience in order to more-quickly bypass that protection by packing malicious objects with the proper utility for undetection.
This is a good development, it will mitigate the amount of trash and e-mail spamming worms from spreading thru google's service and leave the door open for the l337. =) yay.
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|I'm sure they wrote the virus engine themselves. In the past, if google needed software, they just made it.
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|Just like Keyhole and Picasa right?
=p
Google isn't the all-wonderful "we do it ourselves" company everyone makes them out to be. Just like any other business, they will make business decisions.
True, they do more in-house than most, but not everything.
**EDIT**
Actually, I guess they've acquired a lot more than I realized. Check this out:
http://www.google.com/se...oogle+acquired+software
Urchin, Zipdash, Dodgeball, Pyra Labs, Android, Riya...
Those are just the names of companies they acquired that I saw on the first page of results...
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|Yes, and how much of the technology that they aquired with those purchases would you have seen had it not been bought, stamped, tinkered with, and released by Google?
I know you're not trolling or flaming, but before anyone likens Google to some monster eating everything up, please realize what they've done with the tech gained through these purchases.
They aren't sitting on it, they're not buying up competitors just to drive out competition....
Hardly anyone ever heard of picasa until they were bought by Google. They aquire that which they need to drive their services, not to stifle competition or innovation.
Heh... Besides, what'd ya think they were going to do with all that money? Build a moon base?
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|lol. Yeah, don't get me wrong.
I wasn't saying it was bad that Google bought those companies instead of writing the software themselves.
I'm just saying people don't realize how much Google does buy instead of developing from the ground-up by themselves. Yet everyone criticises Microsoft for buying one security company (Giant) to make their anti-spyware program.
The point I'm trying to make is, everyone does it, including Google, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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|Does this mean that we can send and recieve non-infected EXEs again?
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|Doubtful.
Just rename the attachment to .ex_
It's amazing how well that works. =)
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|well, not yet. I've just tried it with an exe and a zip archive containing an exe and it rejects them for being/containing exe's; it also doesn't mention having scanned the attachments, like yahoo does. I'll try with tgz and 7zip, I think those worked.
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|...or just rename the extension like I said.
Really, it's that simple, and it works.
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|DAMN.
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|Try explaining that to a customer.
"Now, do you see the file, vnc.git?"
"No...it just says vnc."
"Okay... open My Computer...click on tools...click on Folder options...click on...blahblahblah..."
What a PITA.
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|Lol. You have no idea how many times I had to do that working tech support for 2 and half years.
I figured the people commenting on here had a little more experience, so I didn't elaborate =)
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|lmao..
methinks you think hold BN users in too high a regard.
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|It's possible.
I figured since he knew what an EXE was, well.... yeah... you're right.
My bad. =)
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|Dude,
I tried renaming bootyandvirus.exe to .ex_ and it wouldn't let me.
Keeps telling me that I "must type a file name".
What am I doing wrong??!?
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|ROFL
hmmm... maybe I should be more careful with my instructions...
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|I don't like the way GMail groups messages from the same sender together, but I don't like XP's taskbar grouping either. Personal opinion I guess.
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|You aren't alone. It was the number one complaint when we migrated to Outlook, that grouping crap which took up too much screen real estate.
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|ummmm... the whole reason to group the messages is to cut DOIWN on massive amounts of mail headers "taking up screen real estate", and it works well. It's soooo nice to be able to open my gmail and see something like this:
[] personname (20) subject date
instead of this:
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
now you tell ME, how is gmail taking up too much screen real estate? get a clue what you're posting about before you post.
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|[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
[] personname subject date
This one is definitely better than
[] personname (20) subject date
Can easily find messages than the conversation thingy GMail uses.
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|It groups them by subject and a few other requirements, not by sender, so that back and forth email conversations are grouped so that you can read them in a linear mode.
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|Really? I feel the exact opposite way about it. It's easier for me to search based on conversation and wading only through 20 or so, instead of trying to push through 200+ messages.
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|Gmail is the best I have used. Virus scanning is kind of redundant since most infectable attachments are not allowed anyways.
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|If there is one thing I've learned, it's that redundancy is a good thing in some instances.
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|If there is one thing I've learned, it's that redundancy is a good thing in some instances.
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|That should be tight! Just one step closer to over running Yahoo, Excite, MSN, AOL, and the such. I still totally disagree with GoogleTalk. I don't know but it just isn't a NORMAL instant messaging program [in my very own personal opinion.] Too bad all of the good e-mail account names were gone before the program was even publically released!! That really suxed
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|Silent? What do you mean silently added? I LOVE Gmail, but when they add features, it's in big red text on every page that cannot be removed or dismissed. It's hardly silent.
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|I fail to see this big red text of which you speak.
=/
Am I missing something?
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|Yep. Upper left. About 2/3rds of the way across the top of the page.
Not invasive, hell, I didn't even notice it until you mentioned it wasn't there.
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|Well wouldn't you know it, Google made a jerk out of me.
I knew what he was talking about, but my inbox didn't have the red letters at the top yesterday when I wrote that comment. I was poking fun at the fact that there was no message this time.
...and now there is. Dangit.
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|It's a conspiracy. Google wants to make you look bad.
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|"Google wants to make you look bad"
Great... I don't need any help.
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|lol
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|So who provides the scanning engine, I wonder?
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|I had the same question.
I hope they're not relying solely on ClamAV (the only free and open source AV for mail servers that I know of) lol
If so, it MIGHT catch one of the sober viruses.
...on a good day.
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|Now Gmail is complete. I use it everyday via Thunderbird. Im glad that SMTP is available. I used to use Yahoo but you have to pay for that kind of access. I also like that fact that the ads are not as annoying as Yahoo's.
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|I'm not sure if its still true, but last I read pay pop3 access is only for yahoo.com (US) accounts, not for yahoo.ca etc.
Bottom line, pop3 access free for NON US accounts.
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|If you agree to recieve daily/weekly spam direct from Yahoo then they let you access your email using pop. Not much use without smtp tho.
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|I use Yahoo Canada POP and get ZERO spam.
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|I also use yahoo, gmail, and hotmail access in outlook without a problem, you do supposedly sign up to receive spam in yahoo, but they allow you to check off what you want, and if you check off nothing, you get nothing! lol....Yahoo is ripping you americans off!...sucks to be you
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|Really sucks to be you!
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|gmail is the best
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|No, it sucks to be anyone using Yahoo for mail.
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