As far as I can remembe the whole HTML virus was an overblown paranoia a
while back. There is no way HTML can contain a virus in its own right.
However (and I know this because I've experimented with it - Microshaft can
be so blind!!) it is possible to embed a malicious script into Outlook
stationery that accesses a few scripting engines that allow complete system
access (e.g. the VBScript FileSystem Object that comes with Windows
98/ME/2000 AS STANDARD) and can mess up a machine.
This stuff wouldn't necessarily get picked up by your mail server itself, ut
anybody with an HTML-compliant mail reader could suffer problems and as far
as I know most virus protection stuff doesn't pick up on this ;-)
But when all is said and done, we are a newsgroup. We get targeted for virii
infection all the time, so shit happens occasionally.
Personally I would prefer to stick with plain text anyway. OK it would be
nice for us to be able to format our lingo properly so others can easily
read it, but HTML of that nature (how many <FONT> tags would you expect in a
simple script if we coloured it?) would only increase all of our traffic.
P.S. And if anybody is interested to see just how much damage the inclusion
of the FileSystem Object can do, have a look at it, write a script to play
around with stuff then embed that into Outlook stationery - it's even more
disturbing than it is fun :-D
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