By now you have most likely heard of XP Anti Virus 2008.  It’s a application which installs on your PC and then connects of to the internet to download and install various viruses.   There are now a number of nasties which operate in very much the same sort of way.  In themselves they look innocent, but once they are inside your computer they hook into the internet and start pulling down all sorts of harmful Trojans and viruses.

Last week I had to deal with one that had got into 5 computers.  The only common factor was the way that the clients used outlook.  In each case they had the reading pane or preview active.  A email would arrive, when they opened outlook it would automatically display part of the email (in effect reading it).  That would set of the embedded link to download the very destructive software.

To disable Reading Pane:

On the outlook menu choose “View” then “Reading Pane” then off.    Reading Pane displays the first few lines of the highlighted email at the bottom of the screen or on the right hand side.

To disable Auto preview:

Auto preview displays the first few lines of every the email directly below the title of the email.  On the outlook menu choose “View” then  “Auto preview”

The issue is that both these features must “activate” the email in order to display it.