I received an e-mail this morning with information about an Intuit QuickBooks "update" that claims to install a toolbar into MSIE in order to protect Microsoft Windows users from their operating system. Because I agree that MSIE is unsecurable, I gave the e-mail message more credibility than a random e-mail worm message luring users into downloading malware. It turns out, the links in the message body point to "intuit dash fileserver dot org." I'm spelling that out so it doesn't get autolinked. That site offers an executable containing all sorts of evil, no doubt.

Ordinarily, I would just delete the message and continue wading through my inbox. However, this message gave me a moment of empathy for the millions of novice (Microsoft Windows) users that would get suckered into installing something like this. I set aside my knee-jerk reaction to blame the end user for failing to review the SMTP headers or do a bit of DNS research.

It's a shame that this message is bogus -- I was all prepared to respond that Intuit should take the next logical step and prevent Microsoft Windows users from using their products. Heh.