With all the followups to this and other draconian postings, I think that
there is a point that is being missed. Most of us agree that the routine
announcements of new viruses are irrelevant to most lists, but virus
technology is changing, and I think that it is not out of line to warn
subscribers of new developments that may catch them unaware. For example,
given that some posters here have smugly commented that they use a Mac to
avoid PC viruses, it was a shock for many us back in the pre-internet days
to discover that the standard PC prophylaxis of not opening executables was
not enough on other systems, that you could infect a Mac just by inserting a
floppy in the drive.
In the early days of the internet viruses were usually sent out in anonymous
batches, the relatively recent development of getting personalised virus
messages has probably caught many people by surprise. It is one thing to get
a strange declaration of affection from a perfect stranger, but I worry
about the following scenario - it is common for subscribers on our fisheries
lists to request photos of a particular species, and it would not be a rare
coincidence for a subscriber to get back a message from someone whom he or
she knows saying:
"You wrote - 'I need a picture of Dolus fictus for a report ....' The
enclosed picture might be worth looking at."
with an attachment called FISH.GIF.pif
Something very similar happened to me in fact. And while McAffee and
Symantec and all the rest have tons of information on all the viruses out
there (over 50,000 now I think), and there are warnings about opening
attachments, it is not common to see generic warnings about the potentially
deadly .pif and .vbs endings that people may not spot unless they are
alterted to them.
So while I agree that YAV (Yet Another Virus) postings should be banned from
most lists, the attitude that all subscribers should be sophisticated about
the latest developments in virus technology is not justified in my opinion.
I think that we owe it to our subscribers to help them know what to look
for.
We owe it to ourselves as well. One poster commented that she was blamed
because a subscriber was infected and was sending out infected files -
surely that calls for a brief warning to the list? That might have cut down
on her junk mail too.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message -----
From: "JC Dill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "list-managers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: Spam Filters vs. Mailing Lists
> I ban ALL virus warnings. Anyone who persists in sending virus warnings
to
> my mailing lists will get banned. If someone wants to know about the
> latest viruses, they need to be proactive and visit the virus warning
> websites, or subscribe to an announcement list that sends them official
> warnings. Expecting to receive an emailed warning in an appropriate time
> frame from friends or a mailing list is just stupid.
