Well, this sounds like some other features in windows; uh, accessibility? that was tacked on after the fact too. I refer particularly to their "active accessibility." Another thing that contributes to the proliferation of this malware is the use of active content in web pages and e-mails. Hence HTML mail is evil! Another big reason to hate javascript. Those scripts can be used to launch local code on your machine to do God knows what and we can't look at a lot of it because it is secret proprietary code. Correction: the HTML stuff can often be looked at locally offline but I think that flash stuff is protected. Stick to text-only web and e-mail and those outlets will never spy on you. Now if somebody gets the bright idea of "calling home" from a standard desktop application, that would be another story. But that can be watched as long as the source remains available. On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 11:49:15PM +0000, Toby Fisher wrote: > Hmmm, not quite correct, but it is true to say that, for example, the > Outlook-type worm couldn't spread in Linux just because there's not an app > that works that way. In addition, Winblows was not, orriginally, written > with networks in general and the Internet in particular in mind (MS > released a press release that indirectly stated this fact 2 or 3 years > ago), where that is precisely Linux's strength, and therefore it has > security built-in from the ground up, rather than being tagged on later. > > Cheers. > > -- > Toby Fisher Email: toby at tjfisher.co.uk > Tel.: +44(0)1480 417272 Mobile: +44(0)7974 363239 > ICQ: #61744808 > Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. > See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > -- HolmesGrown Solutions The best solutions for the best price! http://ld.net/?holmesgrown
