19-03-2015, 03:18 PM
Having made web browsing more secure, what about email?
In the 1990s, email was very exciting. As soon as people starting sending attachments around, things got even more interesting. We routinely emailed executable files between offices, and these were harmless bits of fun - Christmas animations and the like. But pretty quickly, the bad guys realised that email was a great way to propagate viruses, and thus the fun was over...
Which email software should I use?
Having heard about the problems with Microsoft IE, you'll be amazed to learn that Microsoft Outlook Express is no better!
In fairness, I haven't used it for many years. It's been replaced now, and I've not investigated the newer options in any way. But there are a lot of people out there using Outlook Express, and it's a bit scary!
For completeness, I should say that Outlook Express has nothing whatsoever to do with Outlook, which is part of the Office suite. Outlook is a pretty nice bit of software, and many big organisations rely on it. It is possible to use it at home, but to make the most of it, you need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server, which isn't an option offered by ISPs to my knowledge.
So if you are using Outlook Express, take special care when deciding how to handle files that are attached to emails.
The default non-Microsoft recommendation is Thunderbird, which comes from the same people who wrote Firefox. I use it, and it's basically fine. As with web browsers, there are countless free options out there, and all of them should allow you to import your existing Outlook Express messages and settings, so moving to them should be reasonably easy.
In case it's not already very clear, whatever email software you use, take great care when dealing with attachments - especially when they are from people you don't know.
And be on the guard for the many email scams that are out there - far too many to get into here, but phishing scams are the current flavour of the month, and have been for some time.
In the 1990s, email was very exciting. As soon as people starting sending attachments around, things got even more interesting. We routinely emailed executable files between offices, and these were harmless bits of fun - Christmas animations and the like. But pretty quickly, the bad guys realised that email was a great way to propagate viruses, and thus the fun was over...
Which email software should I use?
Having heard about the problems with Microsoft IE, you'll be amazed to learn that Microsoft Outlook Express is no better!
In fairness, I haven't used it for many years. It's been replaced now, and I've not investigated the newer options in any way. But there are a lot of people out there using Outlook Express, and it's a bit scary!
For completeness, I should say that Outlook Express has nothing whatsoever to do with Outlook, which is part of the Office suite. Outlook is a pretty nice bit of software, and many big organisations rely on it. It is possible to use it at home, but to make the most of it, you need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server, which isn't an option offered by ISPs to my knowledge.
So if you are using Outlook Express, take special care when deciding how to handle files that are attached to emails.
The default non-Microsoft recommendation is Thunderbird, which comes from the same people who wrote Firefox. I use it, and it's basically fine. As with web browsers, there are countless free options out there, and all of them should allow you to import your existing Outlook Express messages and settings, so moving to them should be reasonably easy.
In case it's not already very clear, whatever email software you use, take great care when dealing with attachments - especially when they are from people you don't know.
And be on the guard for the many email scams that are out there - far too many to get into here, but phishing scams are the current flavour of the month, and have been for some time.
