[WEB4LIB] Attachments are now stripped

Bob Rasmussen ras at anzio.com
Tue Jan 23 16:23:26 EST 2001


On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Roy Tennant wrote:

> In the wake of the Melissa virus recirculating, SunSITE system 
> administrators implemented a script that automatically strips 
> attachments from Web4Lib postings. 

I'd noticed. But I think the cure was worse than the disease, or at least it
could have been done more elegantly. Let me explain.

Of course attachments that are .EXE, .VBS, etc., are dangerous. But most
offending messages have a plain text part and an HTML part. This is a
common configuration, and I don't believe it is dangerous. I use Pine 4.21,
and it handles this quite well.

With the current handling, I see only the warning message. I have to switch to
the other "part" in order to read the original message. I suspect many folks
would not know it was there, and would therefore miss the message.

My preferences, in declining order, would be:

1. Allow HTML.

2. Place the warning message AT THE END of "part 1", the original tet message.

3. Make the original message "part 1" and the warning "part 2"

-- 
Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
 company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com 
          voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
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            web: http://www.anzio.com         



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