Bullet-proof your email

So you're back online after another vicious attack on your computer. 
You're sick of all the troubles you've been having.  How are you going to
prevent this kind of this from happening again?  Consider using an email
program that is nearly virus proof, like Pine, a text-based program that
composes and displays text email, which is, after all, what email was intended
to be.

Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express are huge targets for attackers because
they're hugely popular (Outlook express comes with every new Windows computer)
and because there are so many features to exploit.  Don't get me
wrong.  The features Microsoft build into their software help make using it
easy and pleasant -- for the most part.  But remember that the more bells
and whistles you build into a program, there more places there are for breakage
(and expoits) to occur.

Old-school computer users sit back and chuckle at all the troubles people
have with their fancy-schmancy, graphics laden, gadget-heavy computers. 
The old-schoolers not only remember the good old days of text-only email, but
many still use it exclusively.  Let's look at an email program called Pine. 
It was designed for use on Unix computers and is ported to many other operating
systems, like Linux and even Windows.  Later versions of Pine strip HTML
coding from messages and display them as plain text.  Attachments can be
easily detached and stored without executing them.

How can I do text-only email?  There are several possibilities. 
You might, for instance, have shell access to your email account.  If this
is the case, perhaps you can use pine in a telnet window on your computer. 
If you don't have shell access available to you from your ISP, then build your
own server machine out of an old computer you have laying around the house.

If you have or can come up with an old 486 or early Pentium-class machine
that has 32 or more megs of RAM, you can install a network card and a free
distribution of Linux; set it up to fetch mail from all your outside POP3 and
IMAP accounts (it won't work with free web-based mail like Hotmail and Yahoo!
without some external programming); then logon and type 'pine' at the command
prompt and start corresponding.  Chances are, you'll never have a virus
problem again.  You'll not only have a full-fledged email server, but the
added features of a file and print server too, and at no more cost than the old
computer you already own!