On Tuesday 30 April 2002 00:13, Thomas Templin wrote: [snip] > > > > --- I certainly want to make list participation as pleasant as > > possible but I feel no responsibility of any kind if "your hard > > drive is ruined". Indeed, I do not see why it is my > > responsibility to protect you from viruses; I am not your ISP. > > But you ar th maintainer of a mailing list which spreads viruses to > a lot of users, which may not be as professional as you are. Due to > my experience a lot/most users are not familiar with system > administration. Especially Windows users.
Well, even Windows users should know enough to install anti-virus software. I sympathise with people who lose data because of virii, but then that's a risk you take if you choose to run Windows. And I seriously doubt that the kind of Windows user who doesn't know how to install and run something like Norton Antivirus would be up to installing LyX with CygWin! > > Viruses are just one of our problems: spam is the other. I can > > safely say that the only way to tackle both if we implement one > > of the two methods I described in my previous email. So we have > > to make the usual choice between security and convenience. > > Most of the spam mails was coded as HTML mail which could be > blocked. Up to now I have not seen any spam mail going over this > list which was not HTML coded. > > Sorry, but I have to disagree. > Lyx List is the only one I know which don't filter theese > attachments. > Most list maintainers dont allow attachments and HTML mailings. > Tools which allow a precise filtering of those trash can be found at > freshmeat and savannah. Two problems here. While I prefer plain text mail, some people have email accounts which insist on sending as HTML (sounds stupid, but this issue has come up on a number of lists). Again, the sensible precaution is to be taken by the user: if you don't like HTML, whether as an indicator of spam or a bearer of malicious code, just set your mail client to read everything as plain text by default. If you really hate HTML, filter it out yourself. The second problem is with filtering attachments - it's frequently useful on a list of this type for people to be able to attach LyX files. Filtering out certain types of attachments (e.g. .exe, .bat) would of course be useful. Robin
