Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
October 10, 2005

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Volume 1, Number 17 -- Monday, October 10, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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3.  Turn on Email Links in Outlook 2003 after Office 2003 Service Pack 2


Reader Grady wrote about Outlook 2003 changes:

The new service pack downloaded and installed...
  now I have to turn on links in my received mail/

Is there a patch to reverse this nuisance in Outlook 2003 ?

Grady, We've been helped again by Microsoft.  This change came as part of the Office 2003 Service Pack 2 fixes that were released recently. It is part of Outlook 2003's "anti-phishing" efforts, and it was a good try.  As these fixes do all too often, it appears to be an "all or nothing" fix.

If you receive an email with links (such as this newsletter) and Outlook 2003 turns off the links, Outlook also displays an info bar just above the "From" address.  You can turn the links back to turn on the links in that individual email.

Even if you have Outlook 2003's anti-spam function turned off, it still does it's "suspicions email" evaluation -- if it decides an email is suspicious, it would route the email to the Junk folder (if you have not turned off the anti-spam function) and inactivate the links in the email.

If you want to, you can turn off the "suspicious email" testing if you like. That way, none of the links will be deactivated.  Microsoft has a instructions on how to do this on its web site at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011841931033.aspx#4.

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4.  A Recommendation for eTrust EZ Anti-virus

Another of my readers wrote me about his anti-virus program:

Terry;
   I read your article on anti-virus programs with interest, and then with chagrin. For some reason, Computer Associates' My eTrust EZ anti-virus program seldom gets mentioned in the e-press, when it is really one of the easiest, user-friendly, and best AV programs available, in my opinion. This program runs silently in the background, lets you know when a virus has attempted to penetrate its' protective armor, and updates daily, often twice a day, automatically!  I have been using it for at least 6 years, after running into problems with, first Norton, and then McAfee AV programs. Both these AV programs were removed from my PC by professional shops, due to conflicts with programs I was running, especially flight sims. I have experienced none of those problems since installing and using EZ.
   As I understand it, this is actually one of the largest AV programs in the world; serves over 90% of the top companies in the world. It just doesn't get any press!

Ralph Campbell

Thanks, Ralph.  eTrust EZ Anti-virus has been around for a number of years.  As you noted, it has released little publicity over the years, even when there was a free offer a couple years ago.  I'm not sure why it gets so little mention.  Maybe they need to try harder to get included in the reviews of some of the big magazines.

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5.  More Followup on Tracking Your Emails

Reader David Perriman wrote to say that he has been using MSGTAG (article in my my October 3rd newsletter) "for ages" and has been very happy with it.

David mentioned that he used a program called Benign (B9) from Firetrust (www.firetrust.com), which removes any "non-standard nasties" from incoming emails.  In his experience, if he sent an email to himself, Benign blocked MSGTAG's receipt-confirmation function.

We experimented a couple times with emails between us.  By looking at the emails' source code, we could see that MSGTAG was putting a small MSGTAG logo into the email.  The free version also added the words "has notified the sender that this message has been received."

The URL used to download the MSGTAG logo had to seemingly-random character strings -- apparently identifying David's account and the particular message.   Benign, as part of its control of "web bugs," blocked the download of the logo, so that was why David's messages to himself would not generate a receipt notification.

In my case, I use Eudora with "Use Microsoft's Viewer" turned off and I also have "download web graphics" turned off.  As a result, when I read an email from him, I did not download the logo and he did not get a receipt notification.  When I turned on the "Use Microsoft's Viewer" setting, Eudora downloaded the graphic and David got his receipt.

Cool -- it worked just the way I speculated in the last issue!

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Continued in Part 3

Volume 1, Number 17 -- Monday, October 10, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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Copyright © 2005 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.