Do Java applets increase the danger of computer viruses in e-mail?
Dear Straight Dope: An update on computer viruses in e-mail, the recent Q&A in the mailbag: The latest trend is to allow HTML (the language of the World Wide Web) in everything, including e-mail. As an example, Microsoft mail products will display a document containing HTML in HTML format, just as a browser would. But an HTML document can contain Java or Active-X applets, which in fact programs that run on your computer. And while there are security elements in place to stop these from doing any damage to your computer, such protections are rarely foolproof. Further, such applets can be embedded in an e-mail without any visible effect. You might not even know if an applet is running on your computer. Thus, with more sophisticated email processing, it IS possible to embed a program in an e-mail that will run when the e-mail is opened, without any downloading involved. This might introduce a virus onto your computer if the folks that wrote your e-mail package left some bugs in such packa
