I installed the BugTraq NoHTML v1.2.0.0 Outlook add-in, which is supposed to convert HTML e-mail to harmless formats. Some problems cropped up.
First, it left at least several HTML messages intact in Outlook 2000 — in other words, for those messages there were no fixes at all. Second, it makes the Outlook client much slower in its operation, so slow that it’s unpleasant on a dial-up connection into our network.
So I’ve uninstalled it for now, and continue to look for a better solution.
Several readers have offered suggestions, including the extremely intriguing news that Ximian, along with its release of the Evolution client software, has developed an Exchange connector for the software. I will believe it when I see it, but this may ultimately be an answer.
I’ve found at least one ISP that will give me SSH and SSL access to its servers and may go with them. This would mean forwarding all my mail to their servers first, which adds insecurity in one sense, but then downloading into Eudora, which isn’t the virus-spreading machine that Microsoft software has become.
The fact that I should even have to go to these lengths is absurd. If Microsoft cared about security none of this would be necessary in the first place.