Thunderbird
"Thunderbird is Mozilla’s next generation e-mail client. Thunderbird makes emailing safer, faster, and easier than ever before with the industry’s best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, saved search folders, built in RSS support, privacy protection and much more."
Something more secure than Outlook or Outlook Express is an important part of email security. With the release of Thunderbird, I now have an excellent free client to recommend. It's secure, easy to install and use, and even works for AOL. Thunderbird can import your accounts, folders and messages directly from Outlook Express too.
Thunderbird offers intelligent spam filters as well, which can greatly increase your security as well as reduce the clutter in your life. It's the client that I use every day.
Note: I haven't done a real update of this page for a while, but I want to link to this article on setting up SMTP servers that you might find useful.
Mini-Update: Paul Thurrott has written a thorough review of Thunderbird 2.0. One thing will be clear if you visit his site: The man can write.Key Thunderbird Places
- The Thunderbird product page.
- The Mozilla support page.
- The Thunderbird Add-ons page.
- Wikipedia article on Thunderbird.
Basic security settings
Thunderbird will not allow a virus or worm to execute automatically if you have it set up right. Just open "Tools" > "Options" > go to "Advanced" and make a few settings:
- Under "Privacy", check "Block loading of remote images in mail messages." Also not enable "Enable JavaScript in email messages".
- Note: If you press the "Show Images" button later when viewing a messages, that will toggle image blocking off and you'l need to re-enable it.
- That's it. Tough wasn't it? (Read more about the built-in security provisions below.)
More security settings
- JavaScript is switched off by default, so script code cannot run when you open an email message. Check by going to [Tools > Options > Privacy] and see that "Block JavaScript in email messages is checked.
- For more insurance, install the "Allow HTML temp" extension
- Then set Thunderbird to read messages as plain text [View > Message Body As > Plain Text] If you decide the message is safe, one click will allow you to see the message in the full HTML format. You need to add the Allow HTML temp button to the toolbar first. [Right click the toolbar and select Customize > Then drag the "Show HTML" button up to your toolbar.]
That's it. You should be "good-to-go".
Backup
Just back up the contents of your "Profile" folder. It's something like
C:\Documents and Settings\Your Username\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\nc8tkzcq\.
Just replace the entire contents of that folder with your backup if you ever need to. This will restore your email messages, addresses and settings. [more] [more yet]