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Hi Gavin,
Malcolm was concerned about the possibility of
attachments containing viruses, and rightly so.
I believe I have isolated the cause, that
is; I believe my use of the forward button caused my email to appear
to have an attachment (the attachment being the original email which I was
forwarding).
Unfortunately I can't test this theory without
causing more concern so we'll have to leave it at that.
Regards,
Cris
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 10:05
AM
Subject: RE: [sharechat] virus ex
sharechat
> Jim outlook express is not loaded on my computer fot
that
> reason nor is internet explorer used
That all depends, you
may find that the components that make up OE *are*
installed, just that you
have no icons to access them and it doesn't appear
in the add/remoce
programs list. MSFT was in court over this very issue. The
problem being
that in their most recent operating systems in the past 2-4
years, they are
so integrated to the operating system that they cannot be
removed. All they
do is remove the icons, and their irritating ability to
open, when instead
you want your more secure browser or email client to
open. Your machine is
still open to the vulnerabilities caused by said
components
though.
> All are on automatic update.
Doesn't matter, what
matters is the frequency of the updates. If you only
update weekly, you'll
get nailed by most viruses because they spread so
quickly, worldwide within
24 hrs these days. So, if you're updating weekly,
on average you'll get
your protection 3.5 days after the release of the
virus. Yes, you are still
reliant upon AV vendors detecting and
incorporating the signature of the
virus. Even so, your AV software needs to
check for, and download new sig
files on a daily basis. Much less, and there
is little point paying for the
software as the virus will likely infect your
machine before you get
protection.
> And suprise suprise after all this mention of
attachments there are
> more and more of them.
Malcolm, these
most likely were the current flavour of virus, but they could
also be how
some clients send email. For example, Outlook and Outlook
Express often
sends html emails in winmail.dat attachments (this is default
behaviour I
think) - the result if you receive this on non Outlook mail
clients is a
plaintext email with an attachment called winmail.dat. The
solution is to
disable this irritating Outlook behaviour. Naturally, I think
winmail.dat
can also be used to hide viruses.
So it may be a virus, and it maybe
not. Better to err on the side of caution
though :)
Cheers
Gav
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