IT Dojo: Five e-mail safety tips everyone should follow

Bill Detwiler: Instant messaging, texting, and tweeting are all the rage, but e-mail still dominates the communication landscape -- at home, but especially in business. Unfortunately, many people, even IT pros, still ignore the basics of e-mail security.

I'm Bill Detwiler, and in this video, I'll go over five basic e-mail safety tips that everyone should follow.

Because e-mail is so popular, it is still the most common attack vector for phishers, spammers, and virus creators. No matter how good you think your filtering and firewall apps are, you still have to be on the alert every time you open a message. Let's look at some of the most fundamental ways you can safeguard your communications.

First, never allow an e-mail client to fully render HTML or XHTML e-mails without carefully considering the consequences. If you have a mail client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, you should at least configure it to render only simplified HTML rather than rich, but plain text is best. Rendering HTML opens you to the risk of identifying yourself as a valid recipient of spam or getting successfully phished by some malicious security cracker or identity thief.

If the privacy of your data is important to you, and come on it really should be, use a local POP3 or IMAP client to retrieve e-mail, avoiding the use of Web-based services such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail.

Even if your Webmail provider's policies seem privacy-oriented, that doesn't mean that employees won't occasionally break the rules. Some providers are accused of selling e-mail addresses to spamming  partners. If you consider it personal and private, don't trust it to Web-based services.

Another way to ensure privacy is to ensure that your e-mail authentication process is encrypted. If it's unencrypted -- hackers could listen in on your authentication session with the mail server, allowing them to potentially send e-mails as you, receive your e-mail, and cause all kinds of problems for you with spammers.

Check your ISP's policies to determine whether authentication is encrypted.

Some safety tips will not only preserve your privacy, but can also save you a lot of embarrassment. In this category is the advice to turn off automatic addressing features. If you are an Outlook user, you know how easy it is to choose the wrong recipient from an autofilled drop-down list.

Whether it's business secrets or dishing some personal gossip, accidentally sending an e-mail to the wrong person could have serious consequences.

And finally, avoid using unsecured networks! When communicating via e-mail, remember that your e-mail security does not just affect you; it affects others, as well, if your e-mail account is compromised and your address book gets hijacked.

If you absolutely must access an e-mail account that does not authorize over an encrypted connection, never access that account from a public or otherwise unsecured network. You are opening yourself up to more risk than it's probably worth.

The advice I've provided in this video is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to e-mail safety. For more advice, check out our list of "10 essential e-mail security measures," by Chad Perrin, on which this video is based. I'll like to it and several other e-mail safety and security resources in IT Dojo blog.

For more teachings on your path to becoming an IT Ninja, visit itdojo.techrepublic.com. And please let us know if this tip was helpful.

You can also submit your favorite IT Ninja tips by e-mailing them to us at itdojo@techrepublic.com. If we use them for an episode of IT Dojo, we'll send you a TechRepublic coffee mug.

I'm Bill Detwiler. Thanks for visiting TechRepublic's IT Dojo.