fake virus warnings on Hotmail

[doug.quandary]

Someone sends me two attachments and one PDF file. Hotmail reports
UNKNOWN VIRUS on all of them including the PDF. I get them resent to a
gmail account and they download no problem.

As a test I create an empty document using Wordpad on a clean machine.
Sent the attachments to Gmail and Hotmail. Got downloaded from Gmail no
problem. On Hotmail I got this:

"UNKNOWN VIRUS"

Moved to another machine and got this:

"ERROR
Due to an internal error your request cannot be processed. We apologize
for the inconvenience. Please try again later. If you are attempting
to reactivate your Hotmail account, we're sorry but your request cannot
be processed at this time. Please do the following: Close all web
browser windows. Restart your web browser. "

Went back to the first machine and old emails are now reported as
having `UNKNOWN VIRUS.'

Is this because I use Firefox on Linux. As when I move back to XP the
problem mysteriously disappears.

It appears that once triggered this behavior causes other intermittent
errors. Such as empty attachments or the file type stripped off. None
of this happens on Gmail or Yahoo.

Would anyone out there like to try and see if it happens to them ?

 

[Glenn L]

I do not use hotmail, but have had many problems transferring files with
users of hotmail.
I notice it most with .cab files.
Major pain!

 

[Vic]

I tried sending a 6.7meg MP3 to a friend and she said hotmail informed her the MP3 was infected with a virus. What was REALLY
strange was the reported attachment size according to hotmail, over 9meg, 3 megabytes bigger than what I sent!

She reported this to MS and is awaiting their reply.

Vic
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