[CQ-Contest] phantom attachments (brief summary)

[Pete Smith]

Thanks to all who responded.  Since many of the responses weren't copied to
the reflectors, I thought it might be useful to summarize what I've learned.

Apparently, some mailers (Netscape, Microsoft Exchange, Internet
Explorer(?)) have the option of sending messages in both regular text
e-mail and HTML form, in order to let the sender decorate his output with
fancy font changes, colored text, etc.  Most of the phantoms result from
people using this option (or not knowing it's happening).

Turns out that Eudora 3.0 has an option to automatically delete these
"automatic attachments when emptying the "trash" folder. It *does* work.

Also -- and somewhat reassuringly -- Windows 3.1 won't execute a file from
a double-click unless it has an executable file extension (like .bat, .com,
or .exe), so the risk of inadvertently executing a virus-laden executable
is somewhat reduced.


73, Pete Smith N4ZR
n4zr at contesting.com 

"That's WEST Virginia.  Thanks and 73"


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