List Attachments? (Was: RE: VIRUS ON THIS LIST) (fwd)

[David Sowder]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2000, Deskin, Bob wrote:
>Perhaps if the attachments were moderated by David. For example, the OpenVMS
>list that I sent. I do not have a handy web or ftp site to easily and
>conveniently post things to. However, I have no problem with sending
>something to David and he can use his judgement as to whether it should go
>out. I have also considered sending a message to the list asking who wants
>the document, but collating or sending more than 20 or so replies is very
>inefficient.
>
>That's my 3 cents worth (2 cents US).

An interesting idea as the list software could be configured to bounce to
me any message containing an attachment in a way similar to how it bounces
messages that are over the message size limit or posted from an
unsubscribed Email address.

If attachments were very rare, this would probably work, however, it would
increase the list maintainence needs and attachments would have to wait
for me to get to them.

Someone pointed out that free web/ftp space can be had on the net rather
easily.  GeoCities is one that comes to my mind readily.  (I think they
even delete inactive websites after a while.)

>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Sowder [mailto:davids@cosmic.swau.edu]
>Sent: August 16, 2000 10:32 AM
>To: powerh-l@sphere.swau.edu
>Subject: List Attachments? (Was: RE: VIRUS ON THIS LIST) (fwd)
>
>
>On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Aikens, Curtis wrote:
>>Viruses are just a part of life in our industry.
>>
>>I wouldn't go so far as to blanket restrict attachments to the list for
>>this.
>>
>>Instead I offer that we each have a professional responsibility to protect
>>those in our care, be it with antiviral software or just common sense not
>to
>>open unsolicited attachments (or both).
>
>David Sowder, list owner/manager here again:
>
>Perhaps we can use this opportunity to discuss the use of attachments on
>the powerh-l@lists.swau.edu list.  I personally have been thinking about
>restricting the use of attachments for several months but have not had the
>time to look into it further.
>
>o Messages are already limited to ~40KB and thus most attachments are
>  likely too big.
>o Attachments are, in my opinion, more efficiently distributed as a
>  referenced web or ftp document on a poster maintained site, thus saving
>  the diskspace of the uninterested and the bandwidth of all, most notably
>  the list host network.
>o A significant percentage of attachments I see are in what I would
>  categorize as annoying, at least to me personally.  These would include
>  a text/html copy of the message, the VCARD stuff, and most
>  recently, viruses that eat Microsoft installations for lunch.
>
>These are reasons I can think of for restricting list attachments.  I'm
>going to guess from the number of attachments that are over the ~40KB
>message size limit that there are not many attachments sent to the list
>that make it, thus few "legitimate" attachments would be blocked by
>restricting attachments sent to the list.
>
>Note that I did see the suggestion of filtering messages for viruses on
>the list distribution server, but that would only solve the problem for
>this list (there are many others out there :) and may serve only to lessen
>the perceived need for proper virus protection on the mail client machines
>of list subscribers.
>
>Comments?  Suggestions?
>
>--
>David R. Sowder
>Network Manager/Lead Software Technician
>Southwestern Adventist University
>http://www2.swau.edu/~davids/         Primary Email Address:
>davids@swau.edu
>
>
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--
David R. Sowder
Network Manager/Lead Software Technician
Southwestern Adventist University
http://www2.swau.edu/~davids/         Primary Email Address:   davids@swau.edu

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