Outlook/Exchange question about the preview pane

[hulkster]

here at work, several people use the preview pane to view their emails.  you know, instead of having to double click on the email, they click once and it shows the body of the email in the bottom portion of outlook.  well if its spam, and they know its spam,  you cant delete the email without clicking on it (which opens it up in the preview pane....and it sometimes has porn stuff and thats a liability that i dont want to have as a system admin).   also, sometimes emails have viruses in them, and if for some strange reason the antivirus doesnt pick it up, the preview pane will open the email, and deploy the virus.

my question is about the virus....is it possible to infect your PC by viewing an email with the preview pane enabled?  ive been telling people not use it because of this reason, as well as the porn thing.  we have a spam filter in place now so that has taken care of almost all of the porn, but the viruses could still possibly get through some how.  is having the preview pane a possible danger?  and am i right to tell them to disable it?  i plan on disabling it from the server but i just wanted to know.

[TalkingOctopus]

You're correct.

[DemonBrew]

It's better to have Preview Pane disabled. It also goes without saying, make sure to let your end users know about email safety. You turn the PP off, and they're more apt to just start double clicking every email to open it.

Some other tips, depending on your Outlook version: patch Outlook with the latest from office.microsoft.com and Windows Updates, block unsafe attachments (exe, bat, com, vbs), block macros or at least give the users a warning, check your Internet Zone settings (block ActiveX, etc).

Here's some links for reference:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011018701033.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/exsecuritybp.mspx

[hulkster]

thanks for the help guys.  but how do i disable the preview pane from the network level in active directory via group policy?

[DemonBrew]

This is prob what you're looking for:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011402401033.aspx

[hulkster]

hmmm, well i think this might be it, but unfortunately i am running exchange 2003 (which is fine) with office 2000...not 2003.  i wonder if these same options will work in the 2000 version?

[hulkster]

nevermind...found it!   http://www.microsoft.com/office/orkarchive/2000ddl.htm#orktools   sweet, thanks a lot DemonBrew!!!