From Dave Whiteley
Your article suggesting that text e-mails may contain viruses is misleading
(9 December, p 14).
The bulk of the article makes it clear that the messages you
say could be infected with viruses are “HTML-encoded” messages, rather than
plain text e-mails.
Any system, such as HTML, that allows the sender of a message to remotely
execute programs, such as Word macros, Java applets, or Visual Basic Script, is
vulnerable to abuse. Mail tools that start these programs put our machines at
risk. HTML-encoded messages are littered with tags, but if the mail tools do not
try to execute the tags, the computer will not be put at risk.
Ilkley, West Yorkshire
