Re: Is additional firewall necessary?

Sebastian Gottschalk <seppi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[deleted]

In any case, abusing Outlook Express for processing eMail or News from
non-trusted sources like teh internet or oder the warez^W Usenet is
strongly disregarded by even the official documentation available from the
Microsoft website.

Cite?

"processing eMail ... from non-trusted sources like teh internet"?
Where do *you* get your e-mail from, if not "teh internet"?

And likewise for "processing ... News from non-trusted sources like
.... Usenet".

Is that what *you* are saying or what (you say) *Microsoft* is saying?
If the former, why? If the latter, (as asked above) cite?

In some potentially technical brabble it tells exactly, that in such a
scenario OE is trivially insecure and no matter how you configure it,
anyone can trivially subvert it to execute arbitrary code just by you
viewing an eMail (or Usenet posting).

Again: Is that *your interpretation* of what Microsoft is saying, or
what Microsoft is actually saying? If the former, then you're wrong (all
it takes is changing one setting from its default). If the latter, cite.

And even if you don't understand this technical stuff, the bug history and
the well-known discussions on the design criteria and the implementation of
OE should definitely give a clue to even the worst users. (One example was
stated above.)

Not to mention that it's totally broken, really hard to use and hardly
follows any standards.

Mostly agreed, except for the "should definitely give a clue to even
the worst users".

What you call "the worst users" are *the main users*. I.e. the
intended users and the actual users. You don't have to like it and I
don't like it either, but it is a fact nonetheless. Pretending otherwise
is plain silly. It's like pretending that the average driver has F1
driver skills. Newsflash: They don't.
.