May 16, 2000
8:11 AM   Subscribe

[ Damn, it's busy this morning... ]
"Outlook is perfectly safe... perfectly safe; that's why we're fixing it."
posted by baylink (4 comments total)
 
Oh, thank goodness those Microsoft engineers are on the ball! Eh, so maybe it's a little annoying that we can't send/receive all the attachments we need to... and maybe we lose some Office functionality... and we gotta put up with some annoying warning boxes now and then... but hey, we're secure now, right? To all those folks that told us to "get a *real* email client," we'll just thumb our noses and say "But Outlook is fixed now!" ;-P
posted by dana at 10:30 AM on May 16, 2000


The Microsoft description of securtiy enhancements is worth reading. It appears they really are disabling even the functionality that lets you save an executable attachment, which seems to me insane. All I ever wanted was something to block them from running by default and never let you check a box that says "stop warning me about this", so that auto-running attachments are impossible. The other enhancements make sense. I like the fact that you can grant access to the address book for a set period of time so that something can run a mail merge or whatever.
posted by dhartung at 11:26 AM on May 16, 2000


Typical Microsoft knee-jerk reaction. This way, all the people whom this annoys will get to blame it on *us*, instead of Microsoft.

*My* question is:

> This update limits certain functionality in Outlook to provide a higher level of security; it was not created to address a security vulnerability within Outlook.

What the *FSCK* does that mean? "This update to Outlook increases security, but we didn't do it because Outlook lacks any security"?
posted by baylink at 2:22 PM on May 16, 2000


It's obfuscation, MS style.

"While we're not saying that anything was wrong with Outlook, there was this little itty bitty virus thing that spread around. Although there is nothing wrong with Outlook, we are responding to customers' needs by providing a new feature to Outlook. This upgrade will disable potential vulnerable files from executing on your computer."

See how easy it is? Maybe I could work for MS.
posted by hijinx at 8:07 PM on May 16, 2000


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