Eudora MUA: Risky practice

[Borja Marcos <borjam () sarenet es>]

        Hello,

        I have observed a very risky default setting in the Eudora MUA.

        Attachments received with messages are stored in a directory, where they are 
left although the user erases the message. "Automatic attachment deletion" 
seems to be an optional feature, while it should be the default behavior.

        I think this is risky and should be changed; Windows has brought us 
something great: the confusion between data and programs, and what actually 
happens when "opening" a file depends on the file type.

        A user deleting the attachments from the disk (for example, hundreds of 
copies of Sircam) can execute one of them by accident. This deletion is 
usually done from the Windows file manager, which will never ask for 
confirmation before executing a file. As Windows has a joke command-line 
interface, this is perhaps the only option left for the user to delete the 
messages.

        I know this is a Windows fault, but Qualcomm would enhance their product 
changing the behavior to automatically deleting an attachment whenever a 
message is deleted. Better, I think it would be better to extract an 
attachment from a message if and only if the user explicitly "opens" the 
attachment or saves it to disk. It would also help to avoid disk clutter.

        Regards,




        Borja.