Virgin email - spying or nanny?

[Gary L]

They won't allow you to send or receive zipped password protected attachments. if they can't see what's in them. they're going in the bin

Zipped attachments

Virgin Media Mail allows you to send and receive zipped attachments, as long as they meet three conditions:

1. They don't contain executable files or other potentially harmful files.
2. They are less than the maximum attachment size.
3. They are not password-protected or encrypted.

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/virg...ments.php#6584

Not unusual.

I wonder if they can detect winrar files.

[Sir John Luke]

Totally out of order, IMO. What business have VM looking at the content of zipped files?

...and yes, I know MS e-mail clients do similar blocking by default, BUT a) that can be switched off and b) that blocking is done by s/w at the client end - no snooping on the way.

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Not unusual.

Not being allowed to password protect a zip file is usual?
I know Gmail don't allow you to send various extensions, but I don't think they say you can't password protect a zip.

---------- Post added at 11:51 ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 ----------

Virgin Media Mail allows you to send files up to 20MB in size, but the files can't be executable. (Computer viruses are often spread with executable files or other potentially harmful files, so Virgin Media Mail doesn't accept them, even if they are zipped and don't have an '.exe' extension.) If you try to send a file larger than 20MB, or one has an executable file attached, Virgin Media Mail will display an error message that says 'Document Contains No Data.'

This is unclear. are they saying if it has no extension it will get blocked? they don't know if it's an executable or a jpg if it doesn't have an extension

[Reedy]

I just change the file extension and tell the other person to change it back.

[Kymmy]

As Paul says not unusual at all, if their anti-spam/AV can't scan it then they reject it..

It's nothing about cataloging what's in the zip but purely a safety issue for the majority of thier customers..

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

As Paul says not unusual at all, if their anti-spam/AV can't scan it then they reject it..

It's nothing about cataloging what's in the zip but purely a safety issue for the majority of thier customers..

But passwording a zip file can be used as a security measure on the 'customers and recipiants' side. by Virgin doing this they are forcing you to have no security.
there is no option to turn it off, and we don't actually know nothing's not being catalogued. we just think and hope it's not.

[Kymmy]

If you're that worried then you have a simple choice of getting an email system elsewhere, or get your own domain and host your own email addresses..

It's VM's servers and VM's rules that you agreed to when you signed up

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

If you're that worried then you have a simple choice of getting an email system elsewhere, or get your own domain and host your own email addresses..

It's VM's servers and VM's rules that you agreed to when you signed up

[Kymmy]

Well how can it be a spying/nanny state if you have a choice? It's not as if every ISP has the same rules which is purely to do with malware scans

Time for the usual link I think!!!

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Well how can it be a spying/nanny state if you have a choice? It's not as if every ISP has the same rules which is purely to do with malware scans

Just because you have a choice to use another email sevice, it doesn't mean that the one you moved from wasn't spying or them playing nanny.

they even block a zip within a zip. and applies to SMTP mail too.

[dev]

Is this not the google hosted email via VM and so google's policy really?

[Gary L]

No it's VM's policy. VM has added more extensions to block than what Google does.

[dev]

Considering the blocked extension list is a copy/paste of the google help page (with a VM added verbose list) I'd say it's likely it is google's policy. Just because google don't explicitly list the extensions doesn't mean they don't block them.

[Gary L]

VM have compared their policy to googles as a seperate thing.

I must point out that this set of restrictions regarding attachments is
something of a standard practice across many major email service providers,
including MSN and Gmail (see
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...en&answer=6590).

the same VM policy applies to SMTP too.
Googles policy on passworded zips is If the attachment is encrypted and does not contain another zipped attachment, then it can be sent and received.

VM are saying that they can't be passworded at all.