Outlook Express

  • Thread starter Thread starter Betsy Korbonski
  • Start date Start date
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Betsy Korbonski

I frequently get e-mails marked as carrying attachments
but instead there is a message "OE removed the following
unsafe attachments ... " I know the source of these
messages, one is a group I belong to, the other was
forwarded by my daughter. Is there any way I can
download these attachments? Some of them contain
important information.
 
I frequently get e-mails marked as carrying attachments
but instead there is a message "OE removed the following
unsafe attachments ... " I know the source of these
messages, one is a group I belong to, the other was
forwarded by my daughter. Is there any way I can
download these attachments? Some of them contain
important information.
Click to expand...


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 think what Outlook Express does is good; 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..."
 
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