To protect user privacy and enhance user and computer security, Outlook should be configured to disable the automatic download of email content such as pictures.
The advantages of disabling automated downloads:
- Email content that is pulled from websites operated by spammers alerts those spammers that they have sent emails to "live" email accounts. They use the information to target recipients with additional spam.
- Email content pulled from malicious websites can contain malware. While email clients like Outlook can block well over 99% of malicious email content, enabling automatic downloads does slightly increase the risk of malware infections.
- Email content pulled from malicious websites can trigger firewall and antivirus alerts, wasting the staff time needed to run malware scans to clear the report. Checking or changing Outlook's Automatic Downloads settings is a simple process.
Checking or changing Outlook's Automatic Downloads settings is a simple process. Refer to the attachment for step-by-step instuctions, including illustrations.