RE: Suspicious email message intercepted

[Thornley, David]

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 12:57 AM
To: Donald Sharp
Cc: Laine Stump; address@hidden
Subject: Re: Suspicious email message intercepted


[ On Wednesday, May 9, 2001 at 14:18:51 (-0400), Donald Sharp wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: Suspicious email message intercepted
>>
>> Actually it's a fairly good thing to send out the warning email
>> to a list.  People might thus avoid getting the virus.

Alternatively, somebody might read through all the warning messages and
be sufficiently numbed when he or she reaches the actual virus to do
something stupid.  Or take so long wading through them that the person
misses something important in the mail.  We had about half a dozen
warnings sent to the list for one malicious email.  If three of them had
hit the list, we'd have enough warning messages to fill a screen.

>Actually it IS NOT!!!!!  NEVER EVER send such stupid lame warnings to a
>public list, either by hand or automatically!!!!  EVER!!!!

I would except Maarten de Boer's warning, which was interesting and
useful, showing people what the virus was.  I also trust his judgment in
only sending it to the list once.

To be more precise, the automated messages to the list said, essentially,
"this might be malicious", which is something I'd already figured out.
Maarten de Boer said, in one message, that it was malicious and why.
I learned something from his message.

>If some people want to read the list with vulnerable mail readers then
>that's their risk to take.  But the idiots running broken scanners must
>be taught to never EVER send bounces to list, no matter what the reason!

Actually, that's the risk their companies may be taking.  I was shifted
over to Outlook by corporate policy yesterday (so I'm in a mean mood),
and I figure that top management is responsible for that risk.  (Not that
there's any great danger from me using Outlook as opposed to some of the
other people....)

FWIW, my wife's employer wasn't bothered at all by Homepage, and didn't
spam mailing lists either.  Her mail software currently strips out .vbs 
attachments on incoming mail.  I'd suggest that as a policy for those who 
don't want to take the risk of incoming Virus Bombardment System payloads.
If you miss something useful that somebody else posts to the lists, then
send a private email asking for a zipped version, or included in the message
body, or something like that.