Greetings Messages

[Mr John FO Evans]

Hi

How can I determine whether an e-mail greetings card is OK? Especially when
it has an /exe extension and cannot be viewed except by running on a windows
PC.

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Mr John FO Evans
Hi
How can I determine whether an e-mail greetings card is OK? Especially when
it has an /exe extension and cannot be viewed except by running on a windows
PC.

Not OK till proved otherwise, I think!

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Mr John FO Evans
How can I determine whether an e-mail greetings card is OK? Especially
when it has an /exe extension and cannot be viewed except by running on a
windows PC.

No. I wouldn't open or attempt to run /anything/ with an .exe extension.
I'd have also said that any reputable greeting card company would also be
aware of these concerns and always allow their cards to be viewed via
standard HTML.

Although it sounds mean to dismiss greetings cards when someone may have
legitimately thought they'd send you one on the first place, it annoys me
when people do that because most of the online greeting card websites pass
on you email details to spammers, so where someone is thinking they're
doing something thoughtful by sending you a card, they're actually adding
your email address to spam lists.

[Mr John FO Evans]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Mr John FO Evans
How can I determine whether an e-mail greetings card is OK? Especially
when it has an /exe extension and cannot be viewed except by running on

a

Post by Mr John FO Evans
windows PC.

No. I wouldn't open or attempt to run /anything/ with an .exe extension.
I'd have also said that any reputable greeting card company would also be
aware of these concerns and always allow their cards to be viewed via
standard HTML.

I imagine that if this is not spam or worse the .exe will simply convert the
file to an image of some sort.

I wonder if one could get enough of an emulator on a RPC just to do this
conversion? Then if it was malicious it wouldn't do much harm?

John

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Mr John FO Evans
I imagine that if this is not spam or worse the .exe will simply convert
the file to an image of some sort.

Possibly, but the rule of thumb is to *never* run *any* unsolicited .exe
file on a Windows PC.

Post by Mr John FO Evans
I wonder if one could get enough of an emulator on a RPC just to do this
conversion? Then if it was malicious it wouldn't do much harm?

If it was merely a wrapper around an image (and there is *really*
absolutely no reason to wrap an image in a .exe file), then I presume
something like Jess would extract the image on a RISC OS machine -
http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/linksdb?q=jess

[Mr John FO Evans]

Post by Paul Vigay
Possibly, but the rule of thumb is to *never* run *any* unsolicited .exe
file on a Windows PC.

Post by Mr John FO Evans
I wonder if one could get enough of an emulator on a RPC just to do this
conversion? Then if it was malicious it wouldn't do much harm?

If it was merely a wrapper around an image (and there is *really*
absolutely no reason to wrap an image in a .exe file), then I presume
something like Jess would extract the image on a RISC OS machine -
http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/linksdb?q=jess

Unfortunately this didn't work - possibly because the file 'extension' was
/gif/exe.

John

[Nicholas Prince]

Post by Mr John FO Evans

Post by Paul Vigay
Possibly, but the rule of thumb is to *never* run *any* unsolicited .exe
file on a Windows PC.

Post by Mr John FO Evans
I wonder if one could get enough of an emulator on a RPC just to do this
conversion? Then if it was malicious it wouldn't do much harm?

If it was merely a wrapper around an image (and there is *really*
absolutely no reason to wrap an image in a .exe file), then I presume
something like Jess would extract the image on a RISC OS machine -
http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/linksdb?q=jess

Unfortunately this didn't work - possibly because the file 'extension' was
/gif/exe.
John

Hi Guys

This sounds like something nasty. Many Windows users have the file
extension switched off, so they don't see it. This file would come in
and show on their browser as "?????.gif" so they would think it was
just an image file. However, once it was loaded, it would do its usual
reading of their address book and sending itself to all and sundry.

If you are using a proper RISCOS machine, you can pop the file into
edit and have a look at it, if you really want to, otherwise just
delete it.

Regards

Nick

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Nicholas Prince

Post by Mr John FO Evans

Post by Paul Vigay
If it was merely a wrapper around an image (and there is *really*
absolutely no reason to wrap an image in a .exe file), then I presume
something like Jess would extract the image on a RISC OS machine -
http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/linksdb?q=jess

Unfortunately this didn't work - possibly because the file
'extension' was
/gif/exe.

This sounds like something nasty. Many Windows users have the file
extension switched off, so they don't see it. This file would come in
and show on their browser as "?????.gif" so they would think it was
just an image file. However, once it was loaded, it would do its usual
reading of their address book and sending itself to all and sundry.
If you are using a proper RISCOS machine, you can pop the file into
edit and have a look at it, if you really want to, otherwise just
delete it.

Sensible advice! Ever since I first started decades ago
..(when even Paul was a youngster playing with MicroNet
on his BBC keyboard and Mr Gates and his Garage Band were
receiving their first introduction to networking principles
from the Acorn labs at Cambridge, GB).. I've never bothered
with 'email' cards, prefering to wipe them from my server
mail box, even before any attempt on my part to download.

These days, with dsl, the need to exercise such a tight
control over time and memory space may be not quite so
immediate, but the practise of wiping all such 'junk mail'
still continues.

Time consuming excess, even if well-intentioned, doesn't
interest me. A one line greeting is as thoughtful and at
least as personal as any other form of greeting..

..talking of which, greetings to you, Nick! :))

Bill ZFC

[Stuart]

Post by Mr John FO Evans
How can I determine whether an e-mail greetings card is OK? Especially
when it has an /exe extension and cannot be viewed except by running on
a windows PC.

Another question to consider is do you know the sender!

Check they've actually sent one.