It truly is good advice to avoid opening .exe files that are sent to
you, and this has been stated a million times on this list and
elsewhere. But how 'bout approaching the problem from the other
direction, too...
I actually use my e-mail account to communicate with people. Those
people include friends, relatives, and clients. I'm sure that each
and every one of us receives a number of jokes and forwarded junk
from our e-mail correspondees... I certainly receive more than my
share of such garbage, including .exe files that are of no use to
ANYONE, and even less so for me since I'm on Macintosh equipment
which can't and won't do ANYTHING with .exe files. I get these
swarms of fowarded messages from several people who, strangely
enough, never seem to want to actually write me a note to say "Hi."
This puzzles me. I like a good joke just as much as the next guy,
but sometimes I wish people would stop flooding my mailboxes with
useless forwarded crap and actually write a note to say "Hi."
My suggestion is only to those on the list that happen to be 'guilty'
of forwarding mass volumes of jokes and so forth to everyone on their
address book, and that suggestion is to STOP!
Half of the reason we get these viruses floating around in e-mail is
because people SEND them on to everyone on their mailing list.
I don't mean to offend anyone... I realize that forwarding jokes and
little .exe programs via e-mail is never INTENDED to cause anyone
harm, but if everyone got rid of their automatic forwarding list and
paid more attention to what they were sending to people, then we' be
a little bit closer to controlling the spread of viruses. That's all.
Meanwhile, I'll sit back and relax in the knowledge that, odds are,
it'll be a while before I have to worry much about getting viruses
from e-mailed .exe files and such on my Mac!!
Sorry 'bout the preaching... I'll put my Nomex suit on now.
--
Pete Chadwell
1973 TR6
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