But some analysts questioned whether the new feature would be all that useful in practice. "I don't think blocking Web beacons...in email messages will really help the spam problem that much," said independent security consultant Richard Smith. "It will just stop snooping." "The legit email marketing companies...are really going to hate this feature," Smith continued. "They use email Web beacons...to gather statistics about email advertising campaigns." But many Outlook users may not care about that, regarding any marketing email as spam and welcoming any mechanism that can give such mail the boot. "It's often hard to distinguish between one person's spam and another person's valuable information," said Jupiter's Gartenberg. Directions on Microsoft analyst Paul DeGroot said the new feature doesn't make Outlook foolproof and that the safest bet is simply to use common sense. "If you can't tell that the message is about something you need to know about, and from someone or some organisation you know, just delete it," DeGroot said. "The numerous scripting bugs that have been found in Outlook in the past have made this a best practice." DeGroot noted that Web beacons are not just an email problem. A recent security problem affecting Microsoft's Word 2002 allowed for a similar kind of tracking. "If someone sends you an attachment in Outlook that contains a Word document that links to an external Web site, the same tracking is possible," DeGroot said. Lessons learned
When it came to adding the new feature, Microsoft apparently learned a lesson from past mistakes. With the release of Office XP in May 2001, the company rigged Outlook to block more than 30 types of file attachments, including Help files. The move drew a rapid negative response from Office users because Microsoft initially provided no mechanism for turning the feature off. Still, consultant Smith said "automatic blocking of attached executable files in Outlook (is) one of the most important security improvements that Microsoft has made so far." The new Outlook 11 feature can be turned off in several ways. Users can disable the mechanism completely, or turn it off for any individual message they chose. They can also choose an option that allows HTML content in email from Web sites people have designated as trustworthy. "I think Microsoft errs on the conservative side when it comes to privacy and security," said Gartner analyst Michael Silver. "That's a good feature, as long as the pieces are there to turn it off, which would appear to be the case." Besides the content blocking, Microsoft has added other security enhancements addressing problems posed by HTML email. "You can now convert all your email to plain text," Microsoft's Marks said, another way of thwarting unwanted email cookies and Web beacons. "This feature has been a popular request," Smith said. "Lots of people seem to really hate HTML email. It is almost a religious issue." The big makeover
Microsoft kicked off the first Office 11 test period last week, but the majority of testers outside Microsoft didn't receive their software until Wednesday. The new version of the email program will be included in Office 11, the next incarnation of the software giant's widely used office productivity software. About 12,000 people -- half within Microsoft -- will be testing Office 11. Microsoft has not announced the official name or pricing of the product, which is expected to ship in mid-2003. In this first test version, Outlook has undergone a significant makeover. Microsoft has revamped the interface, removing, for example, the left-hand Outlook Bar that has been part of the product for about seven years. In a potentially more dramatic change, Microsoft has moved the preview pane from the bottom of the page to the right-hand side, though people do have the option of returning it to the former position. Marks described the change as "a more natural" way to view messages, which display like a normal full-length page document. Jupiter's Gartenberg said the interface change is as much about boosting sales as making the product more usable. "Part of the effort is to give their software a new look and feel to make your current software feel obsolete," he said. But the change is also designed to prepare Outlook 11 for use on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Microsoft's specialised operating system for pen-based computing, which the company and computer manufacturers will launch in New York next week. Microsoft also is integrating support for "digital ink" in all Office 11 applications. This would let people use a stylus to write text directly into the applications or to make annotations. Microsoft is expected to release next week an enhancement adding similar capabilities to Office XP. Many other Outlook 11 changes are less obvious. The product features a new cache mode that makes connecting to Exchange servers easier. Cache mode makes email and other Outlook data readily accessible, rather than requiring the email program to constantly access the Exchange server. The feature also keeps a person's data file synchronised with the one on the server. People connecting to the Internet mail server will find that "We've made the process eight times faster," Marks said. Other tweaks in Outlook 11 include a pop-up box that appears at the bottom right-hand side of the screen with a synopsis of each incoming email message. Also, single messages can now appear in multiple folders. Outlook 11 includes more sophisticated handling of digital certificates, too.
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