Arne Hanna wrote:
> 
> One evening over dinner, the question was asked.
> Now people are refusing to speak to each other, the  wedding is off, the
> food in the fridge is labelled and use of the living room is on a rostered
> basis.
> Can someone clear this up?  Is it or is it not possible to transfer a virus
> via email?

	Arne,

	One of the most insidious ways to transmit a virus via email is when someone
attaches an infected Microsoft Word or Excel macro.  It is probably not clear
to everyone that such attachments are really executable programs and therefore
can be laced with a virus.  Microsoft I.E. mailer readers can also carry
ActiveX controls, which can do things to you that you don't want done.  As
Pete already revealed, you don't want to execute an attachment that is really
a binary program.  So stay away from ActiveX and Microsoft Office attachments
and you should be all right.

	Bottom line is to not click on, or otherwise execute program attachments from
strangers:)  To my knowledge, there has never been a text message that caused
any weirdness from a mailer...except that time when a cron job sent me a 100
Mbyte STDERR dump, but that's UNIX, and it only forced me to truncate my
mailbox with shell utilities...

> Cheers
> Arne
> 
> "The DOLPHIN, desiring to sleep, floats atop the water;having fallen
> asleep,he sinks slowly to the floor of the sea;being awakened by striking
> the bottom,he rises again to the surface. Having thus risen, he falls
> asleep again,descends once more to the bottom, and revives himself anew in
> the same fashion. He thus enjoys his rest in motion."

-- 
Michael Coble, Time Inc. New Media, Pathfinder
Gallery: http://www.panix.com/~coble,  representing various artists
Home:    http://pathfinder.com/pathfinder/staff/mcoble/
Work:    http://www.pathfinder.com/

On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Michael Coble wrote:

> Arne Hanna wrote:
> > 
> 
> 	One of the most insidious ways to transmit a virus via email is when someone
> attaches an infected Microsoft Word or Excel macro.  It is probably not clear
> to everyone that such attachments are really executable programs and therefore
> can be laced with a virus.  Microsoft I.E. mailer readers can also carry
> ActiveX controls, which can do things to you that you don't want done.  As
> Pete already revealed, you don't want to execute an attachment that is really
> a binary program.  So stay away from ActiveX and Microsoft Office attachments
> and you should be all right.

Or avoid the Microsoft environment entirely - install Linux :-)

> > "The DOLPHIN, desiring to sleep, floats atop the water;having fallen
> > asleep,he sinks slowly to the floor of the sea;being awakened by striking
> > the bottom,he rises again to the surface. Having thus risen, he falls
> > asleep again,descends once more to the bottom, and revives himself anew in
> > the same fashion. He thus enjoys his rest in motion."
> 

I dunno. This doesn't sound very restfull to me. This is a perfect analogy
to what happens in the morning when I repeatedly silence my snooze alarm.
I would be better off if I compensated for it the night before by setting
the alarm for a later time to begin with. I would be just as late for
work, only I would get more interrupted sleep.


--  Larry Troxler  --  lt@westnet.com  --  Patterson, NY USA  --