sophos welcomes the porn dialler

sophos have recently removed detection for the coulomb dialler from their virus detection list on the advice given by sophos' legal team. The basis for this decision lies in the fact that the dialler asks the user permission to install itself and is therefore legitimate software, whilst I can understand the argument, i can think of many applications that "ask" for permission before installing themselves, i know what they are and what they do ... and i don't even want them in my internet cache, the real question concerns less tech savvy users; they shouldn't have local admin rights to install such items, but, not all items would require the local admin rights! i wouldn't be surprised if such a dangerous action now opens a precedent for producer's of other products such as gator, xxx toolbars, "handy" internet explorer integrated tools, etc. quis custodiet ipsos custodes; if we can't rely on self regulation in the AV industry we may have to start rolling out products like spybot on a domain level? ironically, norton/symantec and mcafee offer expanded protection against "unwanted applications" whereas sophos, whose market is solely corporate, does not ... can someone explain to me why the home user is better catered for?

Comments

[James]

Below is an unedited transcript of an email from Sophos;

"Thank you for your email.

At this moment in time, our position on adware is as set out below:

Sophos provides protection against software (viruses, Trojan horses, and worms) which behaves maliciously.

There is a category of application known as "adware" which although sometimes annoying cannot be described as malicious. The programs are normally up front about what they plan to do, ask the user's permission at installation, and include uninstallers.

Understandably, the vendors of these adware applications are unhappy to be classified as malicious by an anti-virus application and may resort to legal action against anti-virus vendors who detect them inappropriately. Their view is that they have been upfront about what their application does, and have sought the user's permission to be installed.

Users who wish to detect adware applications may like to consider some of
the commercial adware-detection applications available.

If you have seen an application which you believe to be malicious (for instance if it collects keypresses without the user's knowledge or replicates) then please send it to support@sophos.com so the experts in
Sophos's virus labs can analyse it.

Hope that this helps. If I can be of any further assistance please feel free to contact me.

Regards

****

[Dave]

Sophos are mainly a corporate anti-virus tool, they don't cater for the home market. I think they're justified in just doing what they do well, and letting McAfee deal with home user and their need for an all in one anti-virus/privacy/firewall service.

[James]

... question is; why should a corporate user be any different? Corporate users are not immune to the problems that a home user would be subjected to so why should the software miss out core requirements. As far as I'm concerned Sophos has taken away part of it's product and limited it's service to the paying customer. You can't sell something and then want it back.