A message which just arrived via this list included a Word document
as an attachment. I'm not sure that such things are very suitable for
circulating to mail lists, or indeed elsewhere.
Over the past couple of years, we've had quite a lot of trouble from
Word macro virus/trojans, especially via email attachments. Like
many sites, our University Computing Service now recommends that
any documents to be emailed are saved in RTF format rather than
Word doc format. As well as being free of macro peskiness, RTF is
much more widely readable by people with old or non-Microsoft
software, so it's more effective too.
Obviously, if you know what you're doing, there are ways of safely
dealing with Word documents, but people are still often caught out.
Potentially a mail list is a very effective way of spreading these
things around.
Or am I just being paranoid?
John
Dr. J.W. Faithfull
Curator in Geology
Hunterian Museum
University of Glasgow
UK
G12 8QQ
email: J.W. [log in to unmask]
Tel: 0141 330 4213
Fax: 0141 330 8001
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