> How about people posting their favorite ��secure�� programs for email,
> etc... :-)

Okay.  I'll bite.

I use PINE out of habit more than anything else.  I believe, however, that
mutt and elm have had less vulnerability notifications over the past two
years than PINE has.  (To the best of my recollection, I have only seen
one mutt vulnerability over the last two years where I think I've seen two
or three for PINE.)  I guess this is an example of when sometimes habit
gets in the way of what is most "secure".

Why do I use PINE?  It was the best organized mail client we had on the
school *nix network when I was first exposed to it.  (SunOS 4.1.3 if I
remember correctly.  As you can guess, it's been a while.)  PINE, being a
text-only client, runs well inside screen(1) and gives me everything I
need -- a nice, clean interface for me to read my mail.  PINE does not
suffer from what I think are annoyances and issues -- HTML mail (99%
likely to be spam), vectors for virus propogation, and the like.

The reason why PINE is not for everyone:
1. PINE was written by the same people that brought you wu-ftpd.  (One of
the buggiest *nix ftpd's that I know of.)
2. PINE is text only and isn't necessarily intuitive for the end user.
(I only found out about 'Roles', which would be the equivalent of
personalities or profiles, in the past year or so.)
3. PINE runs on *nix.

That said, I suppose I should look at Windows mail clients since that
seems to be the real interest for "secure" mail clients.

The only mail programs I have ever dealt with for Windows are Outlook,
Outlook Express, and Eudora.  I have seen, but not used, another program
called Calypso.

I would have to say that Eudora would be my suggestion for most "secure"
Windows email client, but that's due to my low exposure.  Outlook and
Outlook Express, as mentioned before by others, suffer from issues that
are bugs in IE and others besides.  For the same reason, I don't think I
would suggest using any other mail program that is integrated into a web
browser.  I am personally unaware of any security issues with Eudora in
the recent future, but my memory could be lying to me.

Sincerely,


Chris Ess
System Administrator / CDTT (Certified Duct Tape Technician)

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