I have read the" what about web-browsers topic" and being pretty much a newcomer to this computing lark have taken on board a lot of the great advice given out by the more experienced users of this forum :-TU
But i cant see much about which E-Mail clients are the safest to use.As a lot of information is sent via e mail,some of it wanted, some of it not,which are in your opion the safest programs out there for using this important function.
Do we have a similar situation in that the most vulnerable and likely to come under attack(if that is the right phrase) are the ones provided by M$.
I know some AV`s provide an e mail scanning function but the reviews i have read on these are somewhat mixed.
OE is badware - even the Preview pane will run a nasty!
I used Eudora for some years (not the current open-source one) but it’s a bit quirky, especially with more than 1 account.
Opera has a good client but I don’t get on with it for what I do.
Pocomail is very good; HTML can have 3 levels: on, ‘sanitized’ or off. It costs money though.
Thunderbird is OK, not sure about level of insecurity, very crude though.
Dream mail is good; has great promise. If veiwing as text is the default it’s only a tab to change to HTML. It has some of the drawbacks of Thunderbird - e.g. can’t select text for reply.
40tude, although primarily a News client, handles e-mail. No HTML, OK for select to reply, nice single-key commands, but basic.
I’ve tried about 20 clients and rejected almost all. Still use Poco, Eudora occasionally. Would like to use Dream Mail but prefer the sophistication of Poco.
One thing worth having is a preview on server app. I’ve tried a lot and settled on PopTray. It’s configurable, simple, easy to use and doesn’t need installing.
Early in February, Maplin sent out a newsletter with someting about Valentine Offer in the title (stupid thing to do) and it’s big enough to containa trojan etc. I looked at the preview on the server via PopTray and downloaded it with HTML off.
Sometimes there are e-mails from MS or ‘system’ at about 140kB - delete! That’s where a notifier is useful.
As someone said (can’t recall who): prevention is better than detection.
I use Thunderbird and encrypted SSL links for email security. TB has a very large and diverse user community worrying about such issues. TB is also on a fairly dynamic evolution track, whereas OE and lots of the other email clients are pretty stagnant. Also use Avast! to scan both the email and also the http references embedded in email. Lots of discussion on whether email scanners are necessary, since the resident application scanner will look at email attachments if you try to execute them. I prefer to scan them when they come in and keep them out of the computer rather than scan them when they try to execute and remove them. Since you have already been through the browser discussions, the embedded http in email is subject to the same issues and same solutions-with the added feature that you can simply turn them off or block them.
I always deny html for mail so i don’t feel concerned by code execution in html.
I don’t think mail scanning is such a good idea: it slows significantly the treatment, and any attachment is nothing else than a file: it is always time to scan it when downloaded to disk, provided of course that your mail software allows you to separate the attachments from the mail itself.
Of course, scanning offline any attachment would also be a big loss of time if one did not systematically destroy any unwanted mail directly on the server, including any mail with any unsollicited attachment.
I actually see no noticeable slowdown using Avast! to scan the incoming email. Maybe if you got lots of large messages at once you could see it, but I don’t think the normal user would. Too many other internet access artifacts to mask it. If you use Avast! try turning off the pop3 scanner and see if you can tell-I can’t. http email is your choice, but I have answered quite a few queries here about how to add it to the email client rules. And use it myself (for incoming) with the Avast! web scanner without issue.
Something I forgot to mention. I am also a big fan of using a good email scanner like Mailwasher Pro or PopMan to peek at and discard stuff that should never get into your computer anyway. You can set this up with most regular email clients, but scanners are very handy to use before you spawn your client and can save you a lot of time as well as getting rid of a lot of the trash early. You get the header plus a hundred words or so of text for each one, indication of an attachment or not, decide whether to trash or read right there. I actually use PopMan (free) a LOT more than TB.
I used to scan mail very long time ago, i don’t remember with what antiviral software, and it was very slow; maybe because of spamming, maybe because the computer was also quite old.
I don’t do it anymore (i don’t have avast but avira, it has the same function).
And i don’t use either a third-party mailserver (mailwasher was fine), because i use The Bat, it integrates the mail server function (and also bayesians and antivirus filters which i don’t use).
And I use Mailwasher as first wall and then transfer to Thunderbird with html off. Thats very good defence for those nasty spam and other funny things.
Tried Pegasus a couple of times but couldn’t get on with it (I was sending about 50-80 emails a day with attachments, so Eudora was perfect via PDF Factory).
Thunderbird might be OK when it moves in to this century (why are open source apps. so crude?).
Actually, having mentioned ‘crude’, 40tude, whilst sophisticted is very simple to use; for RSS, having tried lots, SharpReader is a simple one that is very useable - the second most important characteristic (next to actually functioning).
So bells and whistles aren’t essential (especially if they drown out the primary purpose); ease of use is.
