illegal attachment

[Gomar]

Why does aol receive zip attachments, but not gmail?
Or am I doing something wrong when sending attachments to a gmail
account?
what files does gmail allow as attachments, if not zip?


*** ATTENTION ***

Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with
its
delivery.

--AOL Postmaster

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<GHol...@gmail.com>
(reason: 552-5.7.0 Our system detected an illegal attachment on
your message. Please)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.:
>>> DATA
<<< 552-5.7.0 Our system detected an illegal attachment on your
message. Please
<<< 552-5.7.0 visit http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6590
to
<<< 552 5.7.0 review our attachment guidelines. l1si8167577vcq.87
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

Original-Recipient: rfc822;GHol...@gmail.com
Final-Recipient: RFC822; GHol...@gmail.com
Action: failed

[Zack (Doc)]

Did you read the URL supplied?  It seemed pretty straight forward.

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[Sarah]

Gomar,
Gmail will allow you to send zip files - As long as they do not contain .exe or similar executable files.
Also gmail has a maximum attachment size of 25Mb per message.
Some zip files that are close to 25Mb may be rejected, in my experience.
Did you bother to follow the helpful links in the rejection message, it tells you all of this and more.
One thing I'm not sure if the help mentions explicitly is self extracting zip files...these are detected as an executable file, and will be rejected, so don't use this feature if you want to send zip files to Gmail.

[Gomar]

On Oct 30, 11:35 am, Sarah <mailh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gomar,
> Gmail will allow you to send zip files - As long as they do not contain
> .exe or similar executable files.

boo. hotmail, aol, yahoo does, why not gmail? That's why I zip exe
files so that
anti-virus or email blockers will let it thru.

> One thing I'm not sure if the help mentions explicitly is self extracting
> zip files...these are detected as an executable file, and will be rejected,
> so don't use this feature if you want to send zip files to Gmail.

ye, it was that. again... boo.

[Zack (Doc)]

Again... did you read the link? It's a measure to prevent the spread of viruses.  Is it a complete or foolproof method, no, but it does a decent job of preventing many of those macro viruses from spreading.  It was in place before they had proper virus scanning.

BTW, did you ever consider the obvious, it recognizes the file type because of the name, so you can get past that simple block by just renaming the file.  I typically named the file something like this: file.zip.rename  Then tell the person receiving it to remove the "rename".

This is far easier than tracking down a forum to "boo" the product.  It makes sense that if the other products meet your needs better, then use them.  No one is forcing you to use this free product.

[Gomar]

On Oct 31, 6:12 pm, "Zack (Doc)" <z...@tnan.net> wrote:
> Again... did you read the link?
>

I tried, but it doesnt load.

> This is far easier than tracking down a forum to "boo" the product.  It
> makes sense that if the other products meet your needs better, then use
> them.  No one is forcing you to use this free product.
>

ifcourse, hotmail, yahoo are free as well, and fact is they existed
long before gmail came out. Which, if I
recall correctly, you needed a cell phone to even register for.

Strange, that gmail feels it's their business to stop important files
from being sent, but yahoo and hotmail
has no problem with it. BTW, I do have anti-virus, as I am sure
everyone else does.

[Andy]

> long before gmail came out.  Which, if I
> recall correctly, you needed a cell phone to even register for.

Not for a long time now.

> Strange, that gmail feels it's their business to stop important files
> from being sent, but yahoo and hotmail
> has no problem with it.

Perhaps that says something about the lack of care of Yahoo and
Hotmail for preventing the spread of virii.

>  BTW, I do have anti-virus, as I am sure
> everyone else does.

Why are you sure?

I am just as sure that some people do not.

And many that do, do not have up-to-date virus checking.

Stopping an executable file from being sent directly as an attachment
is a very easy and largely effective first-step to preventing some
forms of virus from spreading. [Here, click on this link. Woops,
it's an executable program! Oh-oh, too late, my computer is
infected.]

I'm glad Google does this. And like Zack says, it's easy to "get
around" it, if both sender and receiver trust one another.

Andy

[Zack (Doc)]

I completely agree Andy.  There is a very large number of people not smart enough to run anti-virus, and another group "too smart" to use it. I found a large number of blogs with people talking about not needing it on their machine, and expecting it to be protected in their email.

I'm also very surprised about the link not working.  It worked for me multiple times as well as several other members of this group.

[Sarah]

As you can't load the link to the page, this is what the help page says:

Some file types are blocked

As a security measure to prevent potential viruses, Gmail doesn't allow you to send or receive executable files (such as files ending in .exe) that could contain damaging executable code. In addition, Gmail does not allow you to send or receive files that are corrupted.
Which file types can I not send or receive?

"ade", "adp", "bat", "chm", "cmd", "com", "cpl", "exe",

"hta", "ins", "isp", "jse", "lib", "mde", "msc", "msp",

"mst", "pif", "scr", "sct", "shb", "sys", "vb", "vbe",

"vbs", "vxd", "wsc", "wsf", "wsh"

Gmail won't accept these types of files even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz, .rar) format. If this type of message is sent to your Gmail address, it is bounced back to the sender automatically.

Mac users: Are you trying to send a zip file within another zip file? Please note that when sending a zip file which also contains another zip file, this increases your chances of file corruption. Please decompress all files first and create only one zip file.

You can send and receive messages up to 25 megabytes (MB) total (including attachments). Any message that exceeds this limit will not be delivered to your inbox and will be returned to the sender.

[Gomar]

On Nov 5, 7:31 pm, Sarah <mailh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As you can't load the link to the page, this is what the help page says:
>
> Are you trying to send a zip file within another zip file?
> Please note that when sending a zip file which also contains another zip
> file, this increases your chances of file corruption. Please decompress all
> files first and create only one zip file.

oh, please, give me a break. this is too inconvenient. I am not
going 5 folders deep
to decompress all zip files. foggettabboutit.

BTW, how does one send an encrypted file then, to say my company in
London? bad decision on gmail's part.

[Zack (Doc)]

Where did anyone suggest going 5 folders deep?  Further, Sarah was warning against the problems of going to a zip within a zip.

And I've completely lost how this involved sending an encrypted file?  If you want to password protect the zip file and/or encrypt it, go ahead.  Gmail's limitations are purely based on the filename.  If you rename the file to just be *.rename, you'll get past their protections.