Exercise 16.6: Authentication and Encryption systems

Question 6.
Visit your e-mail or WWW browser provider site and search for security. What technologies does your particular product support?

I have decided to look at Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 which is an e-mail application. On searching for security on the web site I have discovered the following:

Thunderbird’s security and privacy measures ensure that a users communications and identity remain safe.

Junk Mail Filtering
Thunderbird's junk mail tools have been updated to stay ahead of spam. Each email you receive passes through Thunderbird's junk mail filters. Each time a message is marked as spam, Thunderbird “learns” and improves its filtering. Thunderbird can also use the mail provider's spam filters to keep junk mail out of the inbox.

Privacy
Thunderbird 2 offers improved support for user privacy and remote image protection. To ensure a user’s privacy, Thunderbird 2 automatically blocks remote images in email messages.

Phishing Protection
Thunderbird protects users from email scams which try to trick a user into handing over personal and confidential information by indicating when a message is a potential phishing attempt. As a second line of defence, Thunderbird warns you when you click on a link which appears to be taking you to a different Web site than the one indicated by the URL in the message.

Automated Update
Thunderbird’s update system checks to see if you’re running the latest version, and notifies you when a security update is available. These security updates are small (usually 200KB - 700KB), giving you only what you need and making the security update quick to download and install.

Open Source
At the heart of Thunderbird is an open source development process which helps to ensure the application is quickly updated, while also enabling us to take advantage of the best third party security scanning and evaluation tools to further bolster overall security.

References
Thunderbird 2.0 features (n.d.). Retrieved on July, 14, 2009, from http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/features/#secure-protect