Does Preview Pane create a virus vulnerability?

[Edward]

I have my Outlook 2002 set so that the headers are on top and a preview of
the email is below.
Does that open me up to the possibility of receiving a virus or malicious
code even if I don't open attachments?
Would anti-virus software guard against this?

Thanks!
Ed

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

It's possible, yes - but you should have good AV software installed anyway,
and a firewall - both are pretty much mandatory on all networked computers
(connecting to the Internet through a modem counts as that, too!) Your AV
software should be updated regularly - try daily if possible.

Keep Windows and all your office apps updated regularly with patches -
Windows Update, and also Office Update (a link through Windows Update).

 

[Vanguard]

I have my Outlook 2002 set so that the headers are on top and a
preview of the email is below.
Does that open me up to the possibility of receiving a virus or
malicious code even if I don't open attachments?
Would anti-virus software guard against this?

Thanks!
Ed

Anti-virus software will help (and should be considered a standard tool
to add to the OS after install). Making sure your e-mail client is
configured to use the Restricted Sites security zone will also help, and
you might consider resetting the Restricted Sites security zone to High.
This will prevent scripts, javascript, ActiveX controls from running.
You could configure your e-mail client to only use plain text for
viewing your e-mail but you lose a lot of oomph from HTML-formatted
messages shown as plain text. Instead of using the Preview pane, you
could turn it off and instead use AutoPreview mode which will show the
first few lines of each message as text. You could then delete spam and
suspect e-mails (permanently using Shift-Del if you want so they don't
end up in the Deleted Items folder) without worrying about what nasties
might be in an HTML-formatted e-mail.

 

[Edward]

Thank you both very much!

Ed

Anti-virus software will help (and should be considered a standard tool
to add to the OS after install). Making sure your e-mail client is
configured to use the Restricted Sites security zone will also help, and
you might consider resetting the Restricted Sites security zone to High.
This will prevent scripts, javascript, ActiveX controls from running.
You could configure your e-mail client to only use plain text for
viewing your e-mail but you lose a lot of oomph from HTML-formatted
messages shown as plain text. Instead of using the Preview pane, you
could turn it off and instead use AutoPreview mode which will show the
first few lines of each message as text. You could then delete spam and
suspect e-mails (permanently using Shift-Del if you want so they don't
end up in the Deleted Items folder) without worrying about what nasties
might be in an HTML-formatted e-mail.

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