5 ways to securely lock your e-mail address

More malicious e-mail. We can take the following five steps to secure your e-mail against the most dangerous security threats.

After the browser, the e-mail client is the most exploited path of organized computer vandals, hackers and spyware spreaders.

In fact, destroying e-mail is a way to infiltrate your computer system. Melissa, the virus of 1999, was e-mailed, and the following year (2000) malware I LOVE YOU based on Visual Basic has replaced the scale of attacks via e-mail.

Although we think that period has ceased and the threats seem to be no longer true. In fact, these types of computer attacks switch to another era, the period of spam, Trojans and other powerful users that lead users to malicious websites.

We can do the following five steps to securely lock your e-mail, not just for Outlook, but in some cases it can also be used for Thunderbird as well. First of all, of course, the Microsoft client with the Office suite; then the up-and-coming competitor of Mozilla, which created Firefox. The advice here is to apply to other e-mail services, but first of all with your existing e-mail address.

Step 1: Consider carefully.

Most attackers need help from users to perform destructive action. They must convince users to visit a website or open an attachment. But using some malicious messages is more dangerous: These messages only need to be considered to be destructive.

Although your email preview box (the content of a message section when you select a certain mail) has a safe period (mail will only be opened if you see it over the specified time) ). You should turn it off or else when you open and view it, the message will spread the virus to your computer. It is not an effective protection but at least it allows you to read the subject line and sender without risk.

To turn off that function, do the following:

- In Outlook 2003, select View -> Reading pane -> OK .

- In Thunderbird, select View -> Layout . Then it's ' Message Pane ', unchecked . (You can also toggle the message box by pressing F8).

Step 2: Enter Plain Vanilla

Some threats can be as simple as when you view or open a message in the HTML language. Usually attacks exploit vulnerabilities on the e-mail client or on the e-mail browser through an HTML script. (On the other hand to ensure safety, in this step you should also exclude attractive ads that may bring spam)

One way to prevent attacks is to read Plain Text mail, not HTML.

In Outlook 2003 it is easy for the client to be bundled with Office 2003.

- Select Tool / Option , then click on ' Preferences '

- Click on the ' E-mail Option ' button on the upper right

- Check the box ' Read all standard e-mail as Plain Text '. Click OK in this dialog box and next.

In Outlook 2002 (included with Office XP) you must go to the Windows Registry to make this change. You can see in the Microsoft support document section. ( Note : The confusion in the Registry can be very dangerous so be careful when proceeding with your adventurous work ).

Thunderbird of Mozilla has similar settings:

- From the main screen, select View / Message Body As and retrieve ' Plain Text '.

You should also enhance protection with extension functions in Thunderbird like:

- Select Tool / Junk Mail Control . In the ' Settings ' tab tick the box " When displaying HTML messages marked as Junk, sanitize the HTML ".

- Select Tool / Option , then click on the ' Privacy ' icon. Check the box " Block loading of remote images in mail messages " and " Block JavaScript in mail messages ".

- Select View / Display Attachments Inline , uncheck this option.

Step 3: Skip the links

Attacks are based on leading users to click on suspicious website links with increasing levels of danger. The best way you can do is ignore them. But they are still there, full of temptation!

You can make it harder to click by disabling all incoming HTML links. The link will still exist, but you cannot click on it to open the website. Temptation removed!

Outlook 2003 does this automatically for all mail classified as spam. (Oulook called it quite dearly 'Junk'). You need to update Office 2003 with SP2 to get this feature. (You can download it here), Outlook also closes links in the message box that it considers to have viruses. You can reopen the links by right-clicking on the top of the message box and selecting ' Turn on links (not recommended) '.

Unfortunately, previous versions of Outlook did not have this component.

In Thunderbird, both components are currently not built. Although messages that are considered spam can be disabled (see step 2), there are still links that can be clicked, but Mozilla's e-mail client also has a basic anti-phishing feature. . Thunderbird marks some of the messages it suspects by setting alerts every time a user uses an embedded link in an e-mail ( a common trick by vandals ).

Step 4: Block attachments (or Unblock)

You know it's not smart to click on attachments, but sometimes you can't help yourself. When you receive an e-mail from a close friend with the sentence: ' You should see this! 'and tease with an innocent image, your hand can click before your head can say no.

Outlook can protect you in some cases.

From Outlook 1998, like the Oulook 2000, 2002 versions, and now 2003, Microsoft's e-mail client has a component that prevents opening attachments in a long list of file types. The attachment blocker also prevents you from recording files inside Outlook that are potentially dangerous to the hard drive.

Outlook 2002 and 2003 integrate this feature as a standard product. Therefore, if you use those versions, it is already established. Outlook 2002 and 98 protect your mail through a patch, while Outlook 97 is a special case in all.

To check if your Outlook 98 or 2000 copy has been repaired, go to Help / About and pay attention to the version. If it is: Outlook 98: v. 8.5.7806 (or higher) and Outlook 2000: v. 9.0.0.4201 (or higher).

Are you ready to use? If not, download the patch here.

Outlook 97 is a special case. You can add this local protection when changing the Registry profile in Microsoft support document. There will be a warning if you receive an email attachment that requires you to write to the hard drive before reading it. ( Note : confusion in the Registry can be very dangerous and be careful when proceeding with your adventurous work ).

If you want to edit the list of blocked file types, Windows Registry tweak will perform tricks on Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003. (See the Outlock version instructions here).

Worried about modifying the Registry like? You can avoid that complication by downloading the free ' Attachtment Options ' extension at: http://www.slovaktech.com/attachmentoptions.htm. It will bring up an interface to block or unblock the attached attachments.

Outlook block only considers three characters in the file extension, so if an attacker camouflages a dangerous ' .exe ' file is a harmless ' .gif ' file, the malware can sneak through. protective barrier.

Thunderbird has no function to delete attachments. It also does not automatically block certain file types. But the ' Attactment Options ' extension allows you to specify the types of files you can split from your mail. Although not much, but more than not! Download the extension here.

Note : Some anti-virus programs have basic filtering or blocking functions that can be added to computers running e-mailer without the need for other programs (like Thunderbird). For example, Grisoft's free program AVG can be set up to automatically remove all attachments that are executable files or all files with extensions that are in the list specified by the user.

Step 5: Timely!

The most important and most important e-mail security function in your protection is antivirus software. They can scan attachments before it is opened.

This can happen on many levels. But all anti-virus software scans attachments before they reach the e-mail client. If there is something suspicious - it may depend on whether the current antivirus software is detected - the program can 'clean' the file by retrieving the infected parts. Or it simply means quarantining or deleting all attachments. In any case you will see some scenes saying that your incoming messages have been poisoned.

To get the best out of anti-virus software:

- Regularly update signatures, it is best to use any automatic update component that the program provides.

- Make sure all parts of e-mail are open. Not all anti-virus software is enabled by default

- Scanning the perimeter - where anti-virus software detects attachments you are sending to make sure you do not help spread malware to others - can make you a good citizen. But in the harsh world that punishes each other, it is impossible to reduce the memory of anti-virus software and the good performance of the microprocessor and speed up the transmission of e-mail.