In this article we will evaluate whether previewing an infected email can possibly lead to virus infection.
Computer related crimes are cropping up in nearly every nook and corner of the world. In fact the sophistication of hacking attacks has gone up in recent years. In this context many Outlook users have often wondered whether it is safe to preview emails in the reading pane of Ms Outlook. Let’s discuss this issue in detail.
Outlook Preview Pane is absolutely safe except in rare situations
Microsoft has enforced rather strict security standards in the Outlook application and previewing an email in normal circumstances is absolutely safe. To be more precise, if your Outlook application is updated, all Windows security updates have been installed you are unlikely to get infected by previewing even a compromised email. However you need to ensure that you do not accidently open a compromised email or attachment. In its preview mode, the Outlook application makes it a point to restrict all active content, thus ensuring your security.
Incidents of Zero Day Threats compromising Outlook security have been noticed
In some cases, zero day security threats, where hackers have exploited a previously unknown vulnerability, have been known to infect systems, even when the email was just previewed. In some cases the fault was not necessarily with the Outlook application but Ms Word which was called in to preview the contents of a compromised email. The best way to avoid such issues involves automatically installing Windows security updates and also updating any other applications like say your PDF reader, which may be called in to display a specific email content.
Keep a top of the line antivirus application installed in your system
While you can safely rely on security features contained in Ms Outlook, you should also keep a top of the line antivirus application installed in your system. Further you should also enforce email scanning before they are downloaded in your Inbox. Also the antivirus application too must be regularly updated to avoid nasty surprises.
PST Data files in Outlook can get sorely messed up by Virus infections
The effect of computer viruses can remain even after they have been removed with a virus cleaner. In some cases, viruses have known to sorely mess up Outlook PST files and even after the virus has been removed, the data could not be accessed in a normal fashion. Now if you ever encounter an issue with accessing your PST data, you can safely turn to an avant-garde pst recovery tool like the DataNumen Outlook Repair application. It can negotiate the toughest of PST corruption issue and is not bogged down by the media type where the compromised file has been stored. Data can even be recovered from crashed virtual drives and Nero image files. Moreover its recovery speed is amongst the very best that you can find in its league. Owing to its capacity to deal with nearly every other version of Microsoft’s flagship email client currently in vogue, the application is used by administrators and support teams in many enterprises.
Author Introduction:
Alan Chen is President & Chairman of DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including sql recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit https://www.datanumen.com/