Apple to Customer Service: Don’t Help Our Customers with Malware

You'd like to think that customer service is out to serve the customers (you), right? Not exactly! After an unusually broad spread of Mac Defender, a piece of OS X malware, Apple is telling customers they're on their own.The order, straight from an internal memo to Apple's customer support reps, states the following "Not our problem, sucker" rules:

AppleCare does not provide support for removal of the malware. You should not confirm or deny whether the customer's Mac is infected or not.

Should not confirm or deny? Intentionally leaving a customer in the dark as to whether their computer has a virus seems pretty low. But is this next part lower? Hmm:

Do not attempt to remove or uninstall any malware software.
Do not send any escalations or contact Tier 2 for support about removing the software, or provide impact data.
Do not refer customers to the Apple Retail Store. The ARS does not provide any additional support for malware.

So even if a customer is sure their computer's infected, Apple wants nothing to do with these malware lepers. Keep 'em off the support lines, keep 'em out of the stores. This doesn't seem like a great precedent to set for malicious code landing on Macs.