More on Cingular and McAfee
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A couple of days ago I wrote about the unsolicited SMS message I received on my Cingular Wireless cell phone, inviting me to download some antivirus software from McAfee. Unfortunately, the source of the message was unidentifyable, meaning that anyone willing to downloaded the binary package would be just as likely to have picked up malicious code as an antivirus package from Cingular.
Apparently it really is from Cingular. I’m happy that they’re trying to provide a useful service, but this is a case where they’re educating the customers to behave in a counterproductive way. There’s no mention on the Cingular site, because this is a beta program.
Darla Mack writes:
On August 25th a small number of Cingular subscribers(including some Pre-Merger subscribers) received text messages alerting them of a new service provided by McAfee. Apparently, some of these subscribers had been infected by the Commwarrior virus. As you know, the Commwarrior virus can be spread via Bluetooth and/or MMS ad only affects devices running the Symbian OS.
Cingular began notifying customers via sms and in an effort to minimize the spread of this infection, have teamed up with McAfee to provide free virus scanning and removal software. Cingular customers may download the software from here.
Now before you go cursing your service provider for not offering a service such as this, please note that McAfee mobile is in beta stage and their virus protection software is in fact available for the rest of us.
From a discussion thread on the topic:
This sounds like a SCAM. Download something from …wappush.net… I would not.
Cingular is more than large enough to push something from ..cingular.com, or maybe even mcafee.com but not some strange site. Suggest you not browse to any protected sites where you put in a pin/password, if you install this stuff.
I would expect better from Cingular, given all of the Spam, Virus Attacks, and other crap that we have to live with. Sending out an unsolicited text message is the most idiotic thing they could do. At least a bill insert (or message for you online types) warning you that it was coming would make more sense.
I’m curious now, how would you know that this message came from Cingular and not some hack?
Steve Litchfield points out that viruses on Symbian mobile phones isn’t quite the same issue as on desktop computers, with this pithy example:
“Install Cabir?” (or “Sexxy”, or whatever the heck today’s media-favourite virus is called)
with buttons marked ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.At this point, if you still answer ‘Yes’, then you deserve everything you get! (As an aside, there are still at least two more questions to answer before the application is actually installed, giving you two more chances to back out)
I’m still not installing it.
Tags: cingular, mcafee, wireless, sms, wap, mobile, security
