EH-Net

Hi my Friends
i'm writing a book for beginners to teach them how to protect themselves in computer's world. but i have a question about email.
if you do some googling about email managing methodologies you'll find some ways to check your email such as email client programs (like thunder bird, outlook) or web mail.

some website says avoid using email clients just use web mail and others has reverse idea. i wanna ask which ways is MORE secure for email managing?

As you know  email server uses to protocols POP3 and IMAP which protocols is best for  email clients program (i mean for security purpose)?

Thanks

Cyber.spirit

 

people thing email clients are bad coz they save all of mail including viruses in attachment files on pc. But totally web mail is more secure or email client app?

please help me i need it to my book

There's not a simple "right" answer, and it's going to vary significantly based on the mail client and web application. You'd be better of detailing the general risks and benefits of each.

Your right man nothing in security world is 100% true or false and those two ways has thier own risks or benefits. But totally i mean very  totally is it a good idea to download all of the mails on the pc? I think using an email client like thunderbird and configure it to use remote folder (with imap portocol) should be more secure (not 100%) what do u think?

Have you tried using Google? "Webmail vs client" generates some results. So does "Webmail security". Also, keep in mind that mail clients run on different operating systems, so that also makes a difference in terms of overall security (ie: Linux users won't be affected by any attachment infected with a Windows virus). Email clients also offer additional benefits - such as signing with PGP or GnuPG keys, installing 3rd party plugins, and so on.

It's only secure if you take additional measures to protect it. Use SSL with IMAP and encrypt your hard drive.

If the computer the POP email is being stored on is vulnerable, then the email can be comprised. Doesn't make POP email clients "bad".

If you  are using webmail, and your traffic can be sniffed and passwords stolen, also doesn't make webmail "bad".

Put it in a larger context and discuss pros / cons. No clear answer but can be an interesting chapter in your book.

Yes man i googled it many times. But as i said my book is for beginner and i think u can guess most of them are windows user and if email client's problem is downloading all of attachments as i've said u can use imap to work with a remote folder. So any other problems with email client? I think with email client u can avoid web session hijacking attacks and MAYBE SOME OF phishing attacks so it must be better whats ur idea? And email clients like thunderbird can let av to scan the mails

Whats the meaning of pros / cons.?

Then you should have already found most of the arguments for webmail vs email clients from Google results. What resources have you obtained so far?

You're really talking apples and oranges here. Different vulnerabilities affect webmail vs email clients. Yeah, an email client probably isn't affected by web session hijacking, but it can be affected by heap or stack buffer overflows. Third party plugins can cause security issues as well.

In the end you can't say one is better than the other - it's up to the user's personal preference. In some cases you can't use webmail (eg: if you work in a corporation that requires you use Outlook). In other cases, webmail might not be good enough because it's hosted on someone else's servers.

It's another way of saying for (pro) or against (con), or another way to look at it would be positive (pro) and negative (con).

superkojiman most of the results is about speed or the differences of services and so on not security and those security results has different ideas.

Jjwinter not a bad idea i'll work on it

Webmail security and email security generate some good results for me. If you can't find a versus list, your next best course of action is to read up on webmail security and client security, and make your own conclusion based on your findings.