At 19:43 12/07/04, LARRY JOUBERT wrote:
>Lately, I am receiving e-mails with subject:
>message3.txt or message2.txt
>they are coming with different numbers: 2- 3- 5 - 12
>etc..all are from family and friends.....
>
>I can not open those e-mails ! A blank page opens and
>that's all......Do I need a new program ?
>I want to fix that problem, your help is needed !
>HP Pavilion 4550Z, Win 98, 192 Ram, IE-5, Outlook Express 6
Hi Larry
Several possibilities come to mind.
One, you have Outlook Express configured (knowingly or not)
so that you can't open attached files. It's a security
feature in OE that you can disable...at your own risk.
Second, maybe the attachments were virus infected and your
email provider stripped them of their contents...leaving a
dummy text file behind for you to see. (Road Runner does
this whenever they detect an infected attachment in an
incoming message to me.)
Third, do you have Windows configured to "hide file extensions
for known file types"? (In my opinion, this is one of
Microsoft's least brilliant ideas.) Supposed you received a
file named "message2.txt.exe". (The dot in the middle is
perfectly legal and doesn't affect how the file works.) It
would show up to you as "message2.txt" because the .exe
extension would be hidden by Windows. Double clicking on the
file would execute it...being that it's an executable file...
and doing so might infect your computer with a virus or trojan.
There are dozens of file types besides .exe which can be
executed and can contain a harmful payload. (Com, CPL, SCR, PIF
are commonly seen ones.)
How could you be receiving infected attachments from family
or friends? Suppose one friend or family member of yours gets
infected by a virus. Some viruses can (unknown to the computer
owner) send out emails to everyone in the infected computer's
Outlook Express Address Book. These messages will have fake
From addresses, probably an address from that address book.
No record of these sent emails will be left on the infected
computer. So a group of friends or family members can be
infected by one member of the group...without that person
even knowing about it.
A final possibility occurs to me, although it's unlikely that
it would apply for several members of a group. It's possible
to have Outlook Express configured incorrectly so that text
entered into an outgoing email message goes out in as an
attached file instead of appearing normally as readable text
in the message body.
Regards,
Bill
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