Is there any increased security risk if I would add all my e-mail adresses into Outlook

0

I am contemplating to add all my e-mail addresses into Outlook as that would allow me to more easily automate all the content I am getting from different parties. I am currently using Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. I am using Yahoo for the least serious stuff and Gmail for the most serious. Is there any direct risk to my computer or to my other e-mail addresses (e.g. virus infection or more importantly information theft, which is something Yahoo especially suffers from in the recent years), by using them all in Outlook, which would be different then using them all in a browser (I expect that the answerer will be that there is no increased risk, but I want to be sure in any case that I am not missing something).

Thanks for any feedback.

Noir

Posted 2017-06-13T09:29:49.183

Reputation: 183

The biggest risk i can see is accidentally using the wrong address to email or reply to someone. I have all my accounts within a single client and sometimes that happens – BlueWizard – 2017-06-13T21:18:17.777

Answers

0

The increased risk is small, but does exist. If you have all your email accounts in Outlook and Outlook is compromised - and I've seen this happen - then the attacker has everything - if you are using Webmail, they may or may not have everything (depending on how sophisticated the attack is)

Also, if your accounts are using IMAP, you may be adding an additional attack vector as email still exists on the server.

Also, large web services may be better placed to handle possibly malicious attachments then Outlook.

In reality, its not a big risk, but its not a no-risk propositition.

davidgo

Posted 2017-06-13T09:29:49.183

Reputation: 49 152

Thanks for this answerer. Would you perhaps have any advice on some kind of measures I should/can take in order to optimize my security with Outlook, or is there really nothing I could do? – Noir – 2017-06-14T07:38:23.850

I'm a Linux person, so others may have better answers to this - but the biggest thing is to be exceedingly wary of opening attachments (of any sort - to the extent this is practical - and particularly ones which you are not expecting, or which could harbour executable code). Clicking on links is also not a great idea. Make your your mail is backed up. If you don't want to leave a copy of the mail on the server, you should use POP3 rather then IMAP (but then its much harder to sync between devices). Ensure your email uses a radically different, hard password all your other ones. – davidgo – 2017-06-14T08:27:48.593

Asked: 2017-06-13T09:29:49.183

Viewed: 43 times

Active: 2017-12-06T14:48:02.590