OT: Protect from Harmful ActiveX Controls

General
1

Yes, it’s off-topic, but I’ve noticed some people have been posting in
HTML (cool fonts, colours, text attributes and sometimes pictures and
music etc.)

I can’t stop them from doing it, but here are three basic reasons why I
don’t think it’s a good idea:

  1. It takes a longer time to download
  2. Those of us using Unix shells get garbage
  3. The HTML may contain (unknown to the sender) harmful ActiveX controls
    spreading viruses.

If you wish to turn it off (come on, I’ll read your message whether you
post in Comic Sans MS or not!) and you are using Outlook Express 5.x click
the Tools menu. Then click Options. Click the Send tab. In this tab, there
are two frames: Mail sending format and News sending format. I leave these
both set to “Plain Text”. Also in the Sending frame UNcheck the box marked
“Reply to messages in the format they were sent”. There is no worry of
viruses spreading through ActiveX Controls then.

If you are worried about receiving harmful ActiveX controls from others,
follow steps one and two above. Instead of the Send tab, click the
Security tab. In the Security Zones frame click the Restricted Sites Zone
radio button.

Cheers, Graham W. Boyes

Getting nine women pregnant doesn’t get you a baby in a month. You just
get 81 babies. -Dilbert.com

2

Thank you Graham!

I’d just like to add that rec.sport.unicycling is a text only newsgroup.
That is plain text; no rich text or html is allowed. Since the unicycling
mailing list <unicycling@winternet.com> is a gateway to
rec.sport.unicycling, it must also be restricted to plain text.

>Yes, it’s off-topic, but I’ve noticed some people have been posting in
>HTML (cool fonts, colours, text attributes and sometimes pictures and
>music etc.)

Actually, it is on topic since it provides people with the means of
reducing the bandwidth requirements and increasing the signal to noise
ratio of posts to rec.sport.unicycling. It is irritating to see posts
that have a plain text section following by an html’lized version of the
exact same text. Of course the html only posts are worst for those of us
that use e-mail clients without html support. I often ignore such html
only posts.

Please reread Graham’s reasons and suggestions below:

>I can’t stop them from doing it, but here are three basic reasons why I
>don’t think it’s a good idea:
>1) It takes a longer time to download
>2) Those of us using Unix shells get garbage
>3) The HTML may contain (unknown to the sender) harmful ActiveX controls
> spreading viruses.

>If you wish to turn it off (come on, I’ll read your message whether you
>post in Comic Sans MS or not!) and you are using Outlook Express 5.x
>click the Tools menu. Then click Options. Click the Send tab. In this
>tab, there are two frames: Mail sending format and News sending format. I
>leave these both set to “Plain Text”. Also in the Sending frame UNcheck
>the box marked “Reply to messages in the format they were sent”. There is
>no worry of viruses spreading through ActiveX Controls then.

>If you are worried about receiving harmful ActiveX controls from others,
>follow steps one and two above. Instead of the Send tab, click the
>Security tab. In the Security Zones frame click the Restricted Sites Zone
>radio button.

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs <kfuchs@winternet.com> rec.sport.unicycling proponet &
unicycling@winternet.com list owner

3

On 25 May 2001 20:53:58 -0700, kfuchs@winternet.com (Ken Fuchs) wrote:

>I’d just like to add that rec.sport.unicycling is a text only newsgroup.
>That is plain text; no rich text or html is allowed.
While I fully support the text-only behaviour on this newsgroup, I have
more than once wondered who (or what) it is that does not allow anything
else here than plain text, and then who has granted this authority based
on what. I don’t think there is such thing as formal ownership or
governance of a newsgroup but I may be wrong. Of course I do recognise the
right of the (majority of) regular users of any newsgroup to have a
preference for text only but that is not authoritative, or is it?

Klaas Bil

“To trigger/fool/saturate/overload Echelon, the following has been picked
automagically from a database:” “Li Hongzhi, Hainan, John Walker”

4

>On 25 May 2001 20:53:58 -0700, kfuchs@winternet.com (Ken Fuchs) wrote:

>>I’d just like to add that rec.sport.unicycling is a text only newsgroup.
>>That is plain text; no rich text or html is allowed.

Klaas Bil <klaasbil_remove_the_spamkiller_@xs4all.nl> wrote:

>While I fully support the text-only behaviour on this newsgroup, I have
>more than once wondered who (or what) it is that does not allow anything
>else here than plain text, and then who has granted this authority based
>on what. I don’t think there is such thing as formal ownership or
>governance of a newsgroup but I may be wrong. Of course I do recognise
>the right of the (majority of) regular users of any newsgroup to have a
>preference for text only but that is not authoritative, or is it?

Basically, a cooperating group of newsgroup administrators is the
authority that governs the use of USENET’s big seven first level
hierarchies of newsgroups. They are: comp (computing), misc
(miscellaneous), news, rec (recreation), sci (science), soc (social
issues), and talk (debate). These categories of newsgroups are managed
according to specific rules which govern the creation of new groups, in
contrast to the alt hierarchy (where any news group administrator can [try
to] create and even destroy newsgroups). See news.newgroups and
news.groups.

Since this cooperating group of newsgroup administrators provide the
“backbone” news servers needed to make newsgroups viable, it makes sense
that they should have some authority over the newsgroups they support.

As a basic rule all newgroups are (plain) text only, unless it is
specified that binaries (which means anything) are allowed when the
newsgroup is created. rec.sport.unicycling was created without a binaries
allowed clause. Whether or not a newgroup is binary or text only
determines the space required on news servers that carry that group.
Generally, binary newgroups require 100+ times the space of a text only
newsgroup. Thus, binary newsgroups are somewhat rare and their expire time
limits are usually only a few days whereas text only newsgroup expire time
limits are usually a few weeks or months or even more in length. This also
means that text only newsgroups are more widely distributed than text only
newsgroups.

Note that the unicycling@winternet.com mailing list is gatewayed to
rec.sport.unicycling. Thus, the text only rule of rec.sport.unicycling
implies that the unicycling@winternet.com mailing list must also be text
only, since e-mail messages sent to this mailing list are also posted to
rec.sport.unicycling as a normal function of the gateway. (Of course
messages posted to the newgroup are conversely sent to the mailing list,
again as a normal function of the gateway. However, this has no effect
on the text only rule, since this mailing list is mentioned as part of
the rec.sport.unicycling charter, and is thus probably subject to the
same rules.)

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs <kfuchs@winternet.com> rec.sport.unicycling proponet &
unicycling@winternet.com list owner