More than 27 million virus infected messages cleaned by EIM Anti Virus Service since December 2003

The vast majority of these messages were infected by the two latest e-mail viruses; Netsky (more than 20 millions) and MyDoom (nearly 3 millions).

This service, which has been enabled in response to the growing threats posed by e-mail viruses infecting computer users around the globe, protects all types of EIM customers; business and residential who are hosted by EIM Mail Service. An integral part of the service was to inform subscribers of the size and volume of threat they would have been exposed to if this anti-virus dynamic protection mechanism was not in place. This is why whenever an e-mail is cleaned an alert message is sent to the recipient informing him/her that EIM has removed a virus from his/her message.

'The more infected messages sent to the recipient, the more EIM virus cleaning alert messages he/she receives,' said Abdulla Hashim, Senior Manager Business Development & Sales, EIM. 'This is the reason why EIM subscribers were receiving so many alert messages lately due to the recent outbreak of the Netsky virus.'

Continuous virus outbreaks became a daily nightmare worldwide and here in the UAE. The fact that EIM anti virus service proved to be very effective in combating electronic mail invaders targeting UAE Internet users is reflected in the huge amount of virus cleaning alert messages received by customers. On 14 April EIM turned off these alert message, while the service remains to protect EIM mail subscribers, and accordingly notified its customers on the Customer Care Section at EIM homepage: eim.ae/virusalerts. EIM will soon offer its customers an option to either enable
or disable receiving the virus cleaning alert.

'In the meantime, we will continue to provide maximum protection to our valuable customers from e-mail viruses. For viruses that do not spread via emails, like the current Sasser worm, we will keep always alerting our customers about their effects and advise them on the most effective ways to protect their systems,' added Abdulla.

Abdulla Hashim concluded by assuring EIM Mail Service customers that EIM has plans even to introduce an anti spam solution in a move to eliminate this major problem. Testing the applicability of the latest anti spam technology is currently going on and hopefully will become fully operational before the end of this year.

EIM anti virus is a free service automatically offered to all subscribers for a period of one year until 22 December 2004, after which subscribers will have the option either to continue with it and pay minimal fees or unsubscribe and no charges will be paid.