By TechHubby Bert

The most common method of sending viruses is still email and Outlook Express is one of the most popular non-commercial email clients. In this month's article we will look at a few things that can be done to secure OE and avoid serious problems.

The first recommendation with any Microsoft product is to be sure you have all the security updates installed. Visit Windows Update regularly and keep your software up to date. The next line of defense is an anti-virus program with an email scanner such as AVG or your favorite brand. Make sure your virus definitions are up to date and your email features are active.

OE uses panes to display various types of information and can be customized to your preferences. By default OE comes with the preview pane enabled. This pane appears in the bottom right hand side and opens emails as they are highlighted in the message list. The problem with this is that any scripts in the message are executed as soon as the message is displayed. By the time you can delete the message it is too late. The preview pane can be turned off by going to View/Layout and unchecking the box Show preview pane.

To view unknown messages safely there are two things you can do. You can either go to Tools/Options, then on the Read tab check the box for ‘read all messages in plain text’ or use another method to peek into them. Most people like to use HTML to embed pictures or stationary and would be disappointed to have all of their messages in plain text. There is a way to peek into messages when you need to without taking a chance on scripts executing. Right click on the subject line in your message list and choose properties, then the details tab, then click on message source. A window will open with the source code of the message displayed in text format. The full header will be displayed and can be used to determine where the message came from even if the from line has been faked. Below that is the message text, it may be written in HTML format and the gist of the message is usually fairly easy to determine from the contents. Sometimes the message will be in a code or script, and cannot easily be read here.

Whether to open a message or not all comes down to how important you think the message may be. Hopefully these hints have given you some options you were not aware of.