The news
Sat-nav specialist TomTom today belatedly admitted that some of its range-leading hard-disk-based GO 910 models are carrying virus infections - a situation the company seems to have known about since mid-December or perhaps even earlier but chose to say nothing about until now!
A number of owners of GO 910s had realised that the sat-nav's hard disk was infected with win32.Perlovga.A Trojan and TR/Drop.Small.qp and told the company about this. These infections are held within two files, copy.exe and host.exe.
TomTom's press release (see page two for the full text) kicks off with this statement,
It
has come to our attention that a small, isolated number of TomTom GO
910’s, produced between September and November 2006, may be
infected
with a virus. The virus is qualified as low risk and can be removed
safely with virus scanning software. Appropriate actions have been
taken to make sure this is prevented from happening again in the future.
But, contrary to TomTom's assertion these are not, in our view, infections that should be taken lightly or that the company should have attempted to sweep under the carpet.
It also looks likely that TomTom only issued a press release today because it felt it had no choice.
Massive public pressure has been created, we reckon, by Slashdot and Davey Winder's blog on the DANIWEB IT discussion forums.
Thoughts on this messy business? Well, check out the press release on page two then share them with us in the HEXUS.community.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community :: discussion thread about this articleExternal.links
DANIWEB - TomTom admits Satnav device is infected with virus
Slashdot - TomTom Admits Satnav Device Infected With Virus
TomTom UK - GO 910 home page
TomTom - home page
