train on viruses? multipart/mixed

[Tom Anderson]

On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 15:12, Chris Fortune wrote:
> Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express uses a multipart/mixed header when attaching *any* document, including plain text.  This is a
> very common practice, and I don't think it is wise to arbitrarily block it on the grounds that viruses use the same RFC header.

Yeah, I had to do a double take when I saw that suggestion to reject all
mail with multipart/mixed.  I think all mail clients must recognize and
use multipart/mixed.  What's the alternative?  Well, besides "mixed",
there's "parallel", "digest", "alternative", "report", and maybe one or
two more.  But if a client doesn't recognize one of these, then it is
supposed to default to "mixed".

> > I really do think multipart/mixed ought to be deprecated net-wide.

Jef, that's an absurd suggestion.  Email must contain the ability to
send attachments and also contain the same message with different
content-types (for plain text, html, phones, braille, and whatever
else).  After making so much progress into usability, you want to go
back to a single inflexible type?  Granted spam/virii abuse this
functionality, but killing such an integral part of email just because
it is being abused by a small minority is like suggesting that all phone
companies and all individuals scrap voicemail functionality on their
phones just because someone leaves you a bunch of messages you don't
want to hear.

Tom

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://www.bogofilter.org/pipermail/bogofilter/attachments/20040225/9c66d968/attachment.sig>