Microsoft exchange & bloated attachments

[Doug Rorem]

>----------
>>From: 	Brad Martin[SMTP:btm at usa.nai.net]
>>Sent: 	Wednesday, February 28, 1996 4:16 AM
>>To: 	diy_efi at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu
>>Subject: 	RE: Blow off valve
>>
>>At 08:28 PM 2/27/96 -0600, you wrote:
>>>Sounds like a quickie HKS EVC. The EVC I've got uses Fuzzy Logic to program 
>>[chop]
>>>begin 600 WINMAIL.DAT
>>>M>)\^(CH"`0:0" `$```````!``$``0>0!@`(````Y 0```````#H``$-@ 0`
>>
>>Whats with the binary attachments?
>>I've seen quite a few of these lately...
>>Hope it's nothing devious...
>>-Brad
>
>If the attachment isn't an obvious separate file (a GIF, a MS Word doc,
>etc.) then it's probably caused by the Microsoft Exchange email client. 
>For every address in an Exchange user's personal address book, there is
>a checkbox labeled "Always send to this recipient in Microsoft Exchange
>rich-text format".  If it is checked, two copies of the message are
>sent: one is plain ASCII text (which any mail program can read) and the
>other is RTF that has been uuencoded (I think).
>
>It's usually a good idea to uncheck this box for Internet mail addresses
>unless the sender knows that the receiver uses the Exchange client.
>
>--Kent

I had worked with someone on this problem (we use Sun workstations here
and are thankfully immune from generating this stuff). When they first turned
off RTF (rich text formatting) they got rid of the MIME encoded attachment :

Content-Type: application/ms-tnef
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

eJ8+IiQEAQaQCAAEAAAAAAABAAEAAQeQBgAIAAAA5AQAAAAAAADoAAENgAQAAgAAAAIAAgABBJAG
AGQBAAABAAAADAAAAAMAADADAAAACwAPDgAAAAACAf8PAQAAAGMAAAAAAAAAgSsfpL6jEBmdbgDd
AQ9UAgAAAABkaXlfZWZpQGNvdWxvbWIuZW5nLm9oaW8tc3RhdGUuZWR1AFNNVFAAZGl5X2VmaUBj
.......

but then their mailer started uuencoding the WINMAIL.DAT attachment.

begin 600 WINMAIL.DAT
M>)\^(CH"`0:0" `$```````!``$``0>0!@`(````Y 0```````#H``$-@ 0`
.....

I certainly hope Microsoft has this stuff OFF by default. I guess there
should be a FAQ in every list on the net as to how to turn it completely off.
It creates large attachments which really have no utility on Internet mailing
lists (i.e. who cares if their 3 line message is formatted with fancy fonts?)
It certainly creates a lot of needless extra overhead when you figure that
stuff is being sent out to every subscriber on the list.

--
Doug Rorem
University of Illinois at Chicago         (312)-996-5439  [voice]
EECS Department  RM 1120                  (312)-413-1065  [fax]
851 S. Morgan Street                      (708)-996-2226  [pager]
Chicago, IL 60607-7053                    rorem at uic.edu