Why does it matter?

• Almost anything that's not plain text can carry a virus
  • Especially Word documents
  • Even some types of images have been found to have security issues
  • Many organisations now refuse to let attachments into their networks at all
  • So your file might never get through, and you might never know
• Many proprietary formats (especially MS formats) carry extra information
  • Do you know what you're really transmitting?
• Proprietary formats require the receiver to have a particular application
• Documents with complex formatting are usually biggger
• Opening an attachment requires extra effort
  • The effort may be small, or large (depending on the mailer used)
  • It's an imposition
  • It's usually unnecessary
  • It's a waste of bandwidth.

Back to cse1304 notes index | Previous Page

Copyright ©; Monash University, Semester 1 2005
© All Rights Reserved