Can a MVP and someone from Hotmail comment why .mdb attachments fa

[Jay]

Hi

Can this post be please answered ideally by someone from a Micorosoft MVP
and ideally by someone from Hotmail.

If you look over the past few days you will see my post and the many
comments attached to it.

The question is why do .mdb attachments fail to be carried by many email
systems even Hotmail.

Could someone please comment as all I am trying to do is to share some tools
I have developed at University while on a course with some fellow students.

Surely would the better plan be to allow all attachments that were declared
safe and clean by the system virus checker to pass and only reject virus
checker failures.

The Microsoft Access being used is fully licensed and the virus checker
being is used is bang up to date.

Microsoft has a dedicated user community many who are simply trying to work,
study or have some genuine fun.
Why have the minority loonies (who proliferate viruses) of the world to win
by everyone being denied the privilege of attachments?

Jay

 

[Jeff Conrad]

Hi Jay,

First off let me point out that MVPs do *not* work for Microsoft.
We do not make policy for them and we ceratinly do not agree
with all of Microsoft's decisions.

I personally know nothing about about Hotmail, but perhaps
these KB articles may help:

Description of how the Attachment Manager works in
Windows XP Service Pack 2:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=883260

Cannot open attachments in Microsoft Outlook:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=829982

--
Jeff Conrad
Access Junkie - MVP
http://home.bendbroadband.com/conradsystems/accessjunkie.html
http://www.access.qbuilt.com/html/articles.html

in message:

 

[Jay]

Jeff

I shall read those links in the next 24 hrs.

Going to a concert in a short time.

Thank you for your professional response.

Jay

 

[TC]

Jay, as I just replied in the other thread, this is really nothing
unique to Microsoft. There are Unix servers that have similar
restrictions. Those servers are totally unrelated to hotmail &
microsoft. It's an "email & web hosting" issue, not in any way a
"Microsoft" issue.

HTH,
TC

 

[Chris Mills]

The purportedly respectable Jeff Conrad MVP, has posted on his website how to
crack most all aspects of Microsforft Access security. In a security
newsgroup, this would seem to be a conflict of ethics.

That's what I said. Jeff Conrad, purported MVP, has become a cracker by his
associations.

I think Jeff Conrad, and by association his kind, sucks and does no service to
this security newsgroup.

Chris Mills

 

[Jay]

Chris, TC and Jeff

I am a complete respecter of security issues having safeguarded for more
years than I wish to recall financial, defence and research environments by
running secure UNIX environments.

The question Jeff answered me was relating to office systems (in this case
Access .mdb attachments failing). It was quite an ethical answer.

The problem rests with Administrators who instead of allowing files that are
virus checked (especially by their own server based virus checkers) to pass
through their email systems are simply going for the soft option and banning
all attachments (with e.g. .mdb extensions).

In most cases the file attachment will at the receipient end be virus
checked before it is downloaded or after downloading on the recipient's PC.

In all my years of administration I empowered users and enabled their
productivity not hampered them.It may be more tedious in Administration time
and a higher budget but after all what use are the computers with purely
Administrators if users cannot work.

Microsoft products are excellent for users and it sadly continues to be a
UNIX against Micorosoft battle that is causing everyone the grief.

Thanks to all of you anyway for your comments.

Until the egos of some of the UNIX CEOs reach a point of human reality (in
that Microsoft isn't going away as the dominant desktop choice) and the frank
realisation that there is room for UNIX in the 'medium to big iron' market
but not on the desktop.

More power to Microsoft and realistic IT companies and administrators.

Thanks

Jay

 

[Chris Mills]

The question is why do .mdb attachments fail to be carried by many email

systems even Hotmail.

Though a nuisance, in many cases the .mdb extension can simply be renamed to
something unrecognised like .abc for emailing.

It seems to me that the level of disablement due to potential viruses
more-or-less means that viruses have been successfull!

I'm not aware that mdb's can contain viruses per se.
Chris

 

[Douglas J Steele]

I'm not aware that mdb's can contain viruses per se.

http://www.fmsinc.com/free/utilities/fmsavs10.htm

To be honest, I haven't heard of others since then, though.

 

[George Nicholson]

Why would you waste bandwidth attaching mdb files rather than zipping the
file and attaching it?

One reason mdb files might be "banned" is because it such a terrible,
terrible idea to send them "as-is".

 

[TC]

Zipping the file was covered in his previous thread, "Access .mdb
attachments not allowed by Hotmail and University", a few entries
further down.

He started this later thread, to get an explanation of /why/ mdb files
are rejected by hotmail - given that homail, and Access, are both owned
by microsoft.

I'd seriously doubt that any file attachment ould be rejected "becase
it should have ben zipped". There'd be lots of plain text attachments
being rejected, if that were the case!

Cheers,
TC

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

He started this later thread, to get an explanation of /why/ mdb files
are rejected by hotmail - given that homail, and Access, are both owned
by microsoft.

<snip>

A forlorn hope, of course. It took me a while to realise this myself, but it
is clear to me now that Microsoft is such a big organisation, and the
various teams within it have sufficient autonomy, that an Access PM is no
more likely to know (and even less likely to comment) why a particular
decision was made by the Word or Excel team, let alone the Hotmail team,
than he or she is likely to know about the internal decisions of Sun or IBM.

 

[TC]

Absolutely. Although their public blogs have changed this a bit.
(blogs.msdn.com/whoever)

Cheers,
TC