virus panic

[John E. Malmberg]

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>    1. virus panic (Yanagimachi, Isao)
> 
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
[Unreadable HTML content twice the size of text portion deleted]
> 
> Hi, nowadays, there are numerous viruses going around the net. I was
> scared to open the previous email message b/s
> it has no subject line. Please add the subject line with enough
> signature so that I will have some peace of mind when I open it.
> I know it is not bullet proof, but it is better than nothing.

For piece of mind, you need to use an E-mail system that knows not to
automatically execute the HTML portion of a message.

This is one of the reasons why internet E-mail is historically plain text
only, and typically only 7 bits.  Pranksters would send control codes to
disrupt the remote user's systems.  The E-mail network existed well before
PC users discovered the Internet.

These problems that viruses exploit were well known and programmers fixed
their products to prevent them.

Using either PINE or OpenVMS mail will prevent infection.  Probably the
ALL-IN-ONE product for VMS is safe too.

I have not yet found a way in MOZILLA to disable it from automatically
execute HTML portions of messages.  It may be a bug that needs to be
reported to them.

Even if the HTML message does not contain a VIRUS it can do enough
unwanted things to your system that you generally want to avoid executing 
it. Some of them have been used by SPAMMERS.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only