Can't believe they don't require Microsoft to place a warning on every copy of MS Outlook saying, "Warning: this product is highly suseptable to virii and worms, use only if you are willing to lose everything on your hard drive, end all of your Internet friendships and indemnify MS for responsibility for any ulcers, heart attacks, strokes, broken bones from punching your monitor, etc."
Intelligent people long ago walked away from all of the MS 'Typhoid Mary' email clients, avoiding the MANY multiple pitfalls. Problem is, too few people are really 'intelligent' when is comes to computers - they are users of a system they know far too little about - having too little experience and too little knowledge.
I use an old email client from years ago, with zero problems. I can 'open' all email without fear of virus problems - simply because those who wrote it were wiser than those MS hires today. Not only does it stop all potential virus and html-Java traps and viciousness - it has a ton of other advantages as well. Here are just a few of them.
The software lets me look at all email-headers on the ISP server - before I download it to my system and decided if I even want to take the time to download it. I can see who sent it, what route it took to get to me, what size it is, whether it has any attachments and what the subject line is. If I don't recognize the sender, don't like the subject or if the file is huge (as many virus-content-laden mail is) - I can delete the mail on the ISP server without downloading it. (I delete more than half of the email sent to me, on the server, without ever opening it or downloading it to my system.)
If I decide to open the mail while it is still on the ISP server, I can do so without worry about any attachments doing a thing to my system. If I want the mail - then I can download it to my system. The software also allows me to leave mail on the ISP server for a time if I want to do so for any reason.
When I have downloaded mail to my system, I can save any attachment without opening it or executing any attachment, and scan it for virus in the process. I can also look at the full content of all attachments in numerous ways without fear of virus content.
I am an ISP - I get about two to three hundred pieces of email a day - and virus among them is very common. Since before the Internet was born (publicly,) I've been the recipient and sender of more email than most people - and I have never contracted a single virus. I almost did - once... when I visited my son and he handed me a diskette that had a boot-virus on it, but my system caught it immediately.
Suggestion for 'intelligent people' - get McAfee scan, and learn how and when to use it - but don't buy nor install their full automatic software. If you don't know what you are doing, you might want to install Norton's System Works... and hope - but that has its own set of problems, only slightly less onerous than McAfee, and not quite as effective or as thorough. McAfee normally gets fixes out faster, and has better access to virus data-file updates on the net.