See. And who are we to tell oranges and apples apart as ISP. :lol:
Now that I think of it, allowing for infections by not scanning attachments hurts my business just as much as banning airbags. I don't want to be a spamer as much as I don't want to be a killer.
I'm with cjp on this one. ISP's are "service providers". If they want to screen and filter my email, they should make it optional and ask nicely. I'm tired of hysteria constantly taking away freedom.
My point is that you wouldn't even know about your emails being scanned for viruses, as much as you wouldn't know that I could be checking the text of your email if I wanted. After all, even if you use encrypted connection, on my server the messages are still held decrypted.
Option you say... Sounds like freedom, but how am I supposed to tell if you're responsible enough to refuse my scanning?
The only solution that I see is "don't use our e-mail feature if you don't want, although we will still provide you Internet service". I'm sure that the lazy users will be happy that they don't need to install local anti virus software for scanning their emails. Maybe they would have to pay for it and call that nerd next door to install it for them?
I've dealt with more draconian ISPs back in the days. When they detected malware in some of their clients' hosts (by packet sniffing?), they automatically blocked the clients' access to their services (LAN/WAN), called them and offered help in removing the yuck... for a price

You can see that they were scums indeed, but try to be in the ISP's shoes for a second, who is constantly getting called by THEIR provider that they need to cut on that spam. It works just like that.