Replies: 3 comments
Ha! I'm sure that the six people worldwide who use something besides Outlook as an e-mail client and lack the ability to manually detect phishing scams will be thrilled.
Posted by Larry Mudd @ 01/13/2006 04:33 PM CST
TB penetration is pretty deep from my experience. Deep being defined on a standard for "everyone outside of microsoft."
If anything these are the kinds of features that draw people to Mozilla projects. Firefox's big draw was security, features, extensions, stability, and ease of use. TB is almost the same in regards to Outlook Express.
The junk mail filter alone is worth switching for. Now a scam filter and inline spellchecking? I don't think OE has these features, although its been a while since I've loaded it.
Outlook's junk filter is terrible by comparision and its expensive software. TB is a download. Outlook is part of a 150-300 dollar Office suite.
As far as manually unable to detect phishing scams. Err, thats a HUGE problem right now. Sure us paranoid techies know all about this, but it sure isn't the case for general PC users. Phishing works. Even MS is addressing it in a future version of Outlook which will send all URLs in email to Microsoft and if its on their blacklist it will warn the user.
Posted by lowbot @ 01/14/2006 09:38 AM CST
Didn't mean to suggest that TB wasn't widely distributed. (I use Thunderbird myself.) It just seems intuitive to me that most people who have the awareness that there are better clients out there and the tiny amount of savvy it takes to install one are probably not in the same demographic as 99% of the people who fall prey to phishers.
I've tried repeatedly to sell my dear old mum on Thunderbird, but she complains bitterly about it and insists on Outlook. Old dog, new tricks. (And not even difficult new tricks.)
Funny thing: because of her habits, and the habits of the people she corresponds with, she has the worst spam problem I've ever seen - averaging over 200 items per day. Even with SpamAssassin and about fifty Outlook rules, it's hard for her to find her actual mail amongst all the junk.
Anyway, maybe it's a chauvinist attitude, but I think that most people who choose another mail client have a clue that "CapitolOne" isn't sending them e-mail out of the blue asking for verification of the account details.
I will grudgingly admit that it's a statistical certainty that a significant number of Thunderbird users are also gullible twits, though. Heh.
Posted by Larry Mudd @ 01/16/2006 03:56 PM CST
