A caution on the use of active content e-mail attachments has come from internet security consultants Skygate Technology.
A caution on the use of active content e-mail attachments has come from internet security consultants Skygate Technology. Skygate director Pete Chown says: ?Email viruses like SirCam have recently caused chaos on the internet. There are various reasons for their success, but one that has not attracted much comment is the habit of many people of attaching ?active? content to emails, especially Word documents. The most obvious risk is that these emails will be infected with viruses themselves. However, the other problem is that people get used to opening unsolicited attachments that arrive in their mailboxes. This increases the risk of infection when the next virus arrives. Word documents are also a problem because they can contain data that the sender thought he or she had deleted. Word does not always remove deleted text from the saved files, so sometimes earlier revisions of documents are visible when the files are examined closely. I have occasionally received Word documents that contain embarrassing information that is not normally visible. There are also problems with Word that are not security related. Firstly, the assumption that the recipient has Word installed which makes things difficult for people who read mail on Unix systems for example. Secondly, the assumption that the recipient has the same version of Word, which ignores compatibility problems between versions. The internet was successful because it was non-proprietary; proprietary format mail attachments destroy this important characteristic.? Based in south London, Skygate Technology is a consultancy in cryptography, security, e-commerce and the internet. The firm has developed software products that address the issues of its expertise areas. These include e-mail privacy and copyright protection solutions. See www.skygate.co.uk.