Unsafe attachments in Outlook Express

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill O'Neal
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Bill O'Neal

I received an e-mail with an attachment I could not open
because Outlook Express denied access to it because it
was "unsafe." I know that the sender would not have
deliberately sent an infected file. Are there any
possibilities that this is a problem with a security
setting or some other setting, rather than with an actual
infected file?
Thanks,
Bill O'Neal
 
Bill said:
I received an e-mail with an attachment I could not open
because Outlook Express denied access to it because it
was "unsafe." I know that the sender would not have
deliberately sent an infected file. Are there any
possibilities that this is a problem with a security
setting or some other setting, rather than with an actual
infected file?
Thanks,
Bill O'Neal
Click to expand...

Tools-options-security

120,000 hits on google about this.......
 
Greetings --

Outlook Express' default security settings are simply trying to
protect you. OE has no way of telling whether an attachment actually
contains a virus or not, so it temporarily blocks any of those file
types that could potentially contain a virus. In Outlook Express,
Tools > Options > Security, uncheck the "Do not allow attachments to
be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus" option, assuming
you trust the source, of course. The wiser course of action, however,
would be to modify your list of unsafe files, as outlined in the KB
articles below:

Cannot Open E-Mail Attachments in OE After You Install SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q329570

Information About the Unsafe File List in Internet Explorer 6
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;291369

OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;291387


Bruce Chambers

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In
Bill O'Neal said:
I received an e-mail with an attachment I could not open
because Outlook Express denied access to it because it
was "unsafe." I know that the sender would not have
deliberately sent an infected file. Are there any
possibilities that this is a problem with a security
setting or some other setting, rather than with an actual
infected file?
Click to expand...


Even if he didn't deliberately send an infected file, it could
still be infected.

Starting with SP1, Outlook Express does this by default, for any
file type which *can* contain a virus. It's not a virus checker,
doesn't actually check the attachments, and this doesn't mean
that there actually is a virus there.

Such attachments *are* very risky. You often see advice not to
open attachments from people you don't know. I think that that's
one of the most dangerous pieces of advice you see around,
because it implies that it's safe to do the opposite--open
attachments from friends and relatives. But many viruses spread
by sending themselves to everyone in the infected party's address
book, so attachments received from friends are perhaps the *most*
risky to open.

Personally I never open executable attachments at all, except
from a *very* few trusted sources, and then only when I'm
expecting them. But if you want to remove this safeguard, it's
easy to do so: go to Tools | Options, and on the security tab,
uncheck "Do not allow attachments..."
 
You need to understand that current viruses can send email to you using
any address found on the infected system as the From: address. This
means that you can't trust that the email came from the indicated
source. All you know is that someone who has your email address on their
system (perhaps only in a newsgroup file) has been infected with a bug.

You CANNOT TRUST that attachment, unless you specifically asked for it
and there are indications in the message body that the attachment is
coming in response to your request.

Don't disable the OE protection unless you have an anti-virus scanner
running in the background to protect you when you open files and
attachments. I keep a copy of the eicar test virus on my system and
occasionally test my av scanner by attempting to open this file.
http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm
 
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