Outlook - Put in restricted zone

There is a new breed of virus out there - it's a virus which can infect your system when you read the email. Up until this time, the only way to be infected was to actually run an attachment, but some smart hacker figured out how to make the mere reading deadly.

This is done by executing an ActiveX control within an email message. Theoretically, it could also exploit bugs in Java.

To prevent problems with Outlook 2000, you should immediately move that program to the Restricted Zone. In addition, you need to redefine the restricted zone slightly so as to be even more restricted.

In Outlook 2000, select "Options" from the "Tools" menu and click on the security tab. From that tab, set the "Secure Content" zone to "restricted sites".

Wait, you are not done. Now you need to change some of the settings in the Restricted Zone. By default these allow things like Java and Signed ActiveX controls to be executed, and that's bad. Even though these things are supposed to be safe, this is the RESTRICTED zone, so restrict things.

To do this, click on the button marked "Zone Settings".

Then click on the "Restricted site" icon and the "Custom Level" button. Once there, look at the settings for each item and at least set them all to "prompt". Personally, I just disabled everything. I mean, this is the restricted zone and I want sites and emails in this zone to be really restricted.

It is important to remember that everything you set in this screen is set for Outlook Express and Internet Explorer also. So don't change these fields if you don't want to change Restricted Zones for EVERYTHING.

You also need to make sure that your attachment security is set to HIGH. This is done by clicking the "Attachment settings" button (from the security tab of the options pane) and setting the appropriate radio button.