So Hotmail just upgraded me to their new “Windows Live Hotmail” service a few days ago. La la la, fine, who am I to stand in the way of progress? Today, a fellow student sent me an email with attached with school work. Hotmail has summarily “blocked some attachments because they appear unsafe.” hun? The attachment is an Access database!
Question:
How do I get at the attachment? I cannot find a way for Hotmail to let me “allow” the attachment, safety be damned.
For years, Microsoft has blocked Access Database attachments (in Outlook, for instance).
In theory, this is because they may contain scripts that might act as viruses, but in the real world, I’ve never heard of anyone ever spreading a virus via Access (too limited a program). Word Macro viruses were a real problem about a decade ago, and Microsoft never blocked Word attachments.
This is just Microsoft applying their standard Exchange server policy to Hotmail.
Have your friend put the database in a .zip file and it should be OK (and, again, .zip file attachments are commonly used to spread viruses, yet they are usually allowed). Or change the extension so it’s not .mdb and resend.
Not hotmail, but there might be a solution in this:
Gmail will block .exe attachments, and will even look inside .zip files for .exe files, and block those. However, if you change the extension to .jpg, for example, it will go through fine.
