Why can't I open my file attachments anymore?

I downloaded Outlook Express 6 and have not been able to open an e-mail attachment since. I get a message that says “OE finds the attachment insecure". I always opened attachments from the same senders without any problems (in the past). What can I do to open attachments using OE 6?

- Bob

This question was answered on October 21, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Attachments in e-mail have become public enemy #1 in the fight against computer viruses because they are the most likely method that you will contract one.

A recent report from Message Labs that tracks the worldwide ratio of viruses to e-mail messages estimates that on average a worm or virus is present in 1 of every 200 messages For some users, that means a virus is sent to you virtually every day!

Trusting the sender is no longer an option, since most viruses are sent silently to every e-mail address that can be gathered from an infected users system You are actually more likely to be infected by a message from someone you know because of the methodology used by most of today’s virus code.

To make things worse, even if you have up-to-date anti-virus protection, it can be completely bypassed or disabled when you manually open an attachment.

To that end, many e-mail programs are beginning to ‘step in’ on a users behalf in an attempt to protect them from themselves by blocking access to certain types of file attachments.

Outlook Express 6 has a new feature that allows it to automatically filter file types that it thinks are potentially harmful For instance, attachments that have an .exe,

.pif, .bat, .js, .com or .vbs (just to name a few) are generally malicious programs

that should never be opened as an e-mail attachment.

If you don’t want Outlook Express 6 to filter all your attachments, click on ‘Tools’

then ‘Options’ and click on the ‘Security’ tab Remove the checkmark in front of the

entry “Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus” I would not recommend removing this protection unless you have a very good

understanding of file types and virus threats.

Many of today’s worms use a double file extension, like ‘picture.jpg.pif’ to try to

trick people into thinking that a file is something that it is not By default,

Windows will hide the extension of known file types, so the above worm would actually

appear as ‘picture.jpg’ fooling victims into thinking it is a picture file If you

turn off the ‘hide file extensions’ feature, it is much easier to detect potentially

harmful attachments that have double extensions In Windows 9x, go to the Control

Panel and click on the ‘View’ menu then ‘Folder Options’ then on the ‘View’ tab.

Remove the checkmark in front of ‘Hide file extensions for known file types’.

In Windows XP, go to the Control Panel and click on the ‘Tools’ menu, then on ‘Folder

Options’ then on the ‘View’ tab and remove the same checkmark.

Some users may find that .eml attachments (which are safe) are not opening properly

as a result of the change to file associations To re-register Outlook Express for

.eml files, click on Start, Run and type “msimn /reg” in the Open box, then click the

OK button

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