On 29/03/07, Christopher D Maher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Does anyone know if free, web based email clients are more susseptible to cracking or security issues than using a client based on your own machine with you ISP's email address eg [EMAIL PROTECTED]
That's too wide a question to sensibly answer. There's nothing inherent in the model that says the web-based services have to be "worse" than your own machine. So who will have the "better" sysadmin? Your own machine, or Gmail? You or Yahoo? You or Freemail.FM? You or Xtra? ... However, the software on your own machine that controls access to the outside world is probably more standard and therefore better "secured" against the various use cases; i.e. if you only have ssh open for incoming traffic, you only have to trust OpenSSH and your OS' TCP/IP stack. There are occasionally vulnerabilities announced in the webmail clients, normally around the cross-site-scripting area, when the service is asked to display content (incoming emails) that successfully manage to manipulate *your* browser into doing something unexpected. Is that a vulnerability of the webmail service, or your own local machine's browser? If you want a better answer, you'll have to provide more precise criteria; otherwise the answer is "perhaps, perhaps not" -jim
