The protection the LIST provides is that it strips any NON-text attachments,
so on that count you should be pretty safe.

The NEWSERVER, however, generally doesn't afford that level of protection
[mainly because it isn't a single server, but I digress]

The real confusing part is that some anti-virus packages will strip the
(binary) attachment and replace it with a short (text) attachment indicating
the virus was removed.

The Snowwhite case, in particular, is a "trojan horse", meaning that you,
the user, are "enticed" into opening the attachment, which appears to many
people to be a "text" attachment, but as the actual filename is
blahblahblah.txt.EXE, it really is an "executable" program, and any program
you RUN on your system can do ANYTHING it wants...

This is not to say this is the case for all "e-mail" viruses -- there ARE
some that will "activate" once the surrounding message is opened (i.e., you
don't have to explicitly "open/execute" the attachment)  These are
particularly nasty for people who use the so-called "preview pane" [which is
really a seperate window where the message is opened merely by pointing to
it from another window...]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Olav Kappert [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 11:56 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Span on this list.
>
>
> Hi to one and all and Happy new Year.
>
> Did anyone open their email Snowhite and the Seven dwarfs.
>
> This email was distributed through this list.  Does this list
> not have spam
> prevention ?
>
> What damage should I expect from this email message, I
> mistakenly opened the
> email.
>
> Olav.
>