how do you setup thunderbird?

i just installed thunderbird. i haven't used it for a couple of years and i'm not sure if there's anything i should do to make it secure and improve functionality, like installing some extensions.

all i've done so far is click the bit about view message body as plain text. what else should i do? and are there any good extensions i can get?

last time i used thunderbird each account had its own folder in the left column, now all the accounts are together as 'local folders' how do i make them all separate? thanks.

 

theres lots of changes i make in settings, i dont know if any improve security tho.

the only extension i use thats unique for thunderbird is KnujOn. i created an account and after receiving xxx number of junk emails, i press the KnujOn toolbar button to send the spam. hopefully ill get less and less spam.

iirc, when u setup an account thunderbird lets u specify if u want it to have its own folder or just to use the local folders. maybe u can change it afterwards, but im not sure.

 

Here are the main settings I use when configuring Thunderbird:

Extensions that are useful:

Maximize Message Pane
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/1392/
Very handy for long emails.
After you add the extension and restart TB, right click the tool bar/customize... and drag the icon: Maximize onto the tool bar.

Allow HTML temporary
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/1556/
Useful for viewing the rare email from a trusted source that can only be viewed HTML. It will be HTML for that one viewing of the email only.
Add to tool bar the same way as the previous extension.

Sender Verification Extension
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/345/
This one was fun to play with but I don't use it much anymore.

Remember Mismatched Domains
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2131/
This one is extremely useful if any of your secure email accounts use self signed certificates.
It also allows some fancy secure email connections through PuTTY(SSH) without extra popups all the time about mismatched domains.

Tools/Account Settings.../
In the left pane expand the settings under your email account by clicking the small +
Click Server Settings
Advanced... button
Inbox for this server's account

 

Enigmail requires GNUpg

 

I do 3 things...

1. I set up separate accounts (with their own Inbox, etc.) for each email address.

2. I go under Tools|Options|Privacy|Antivirus and check the Allow antivirus clients to quarantine individual incoming messages.

3. I install the Xpunge extension. I place the MultiXpunge icon on my Mail Toolbar where it allows very quick compacting of all folders (if you set it up that way.) It can also empty Trash folders too (which I do not use.)

 

thanks for all the help i'm going to go through this thread tomorrow and get thunderbird setup then. i wanted to use thunderbird partly so i can use the Enigmail extension, it came preinstalled with SUSEś version

 

i just went through everything i'm glad i asked for help because i went through everything posted

my SUSE Thunderbird came with the Enigmail and Mail Redirect extensions preinstalled and i got the cutemenus, update notifier and Empty Trash extensions too as well as the others in this thread. i've already got AllTray (for gnome libs) which lets me minimize thunderbird to the tray

i want to setup Enigmail now. i'm abit unsure how to do it, i've done it once before but that was in a terminal. i made some keys and uploaded my public key to the keyservers. i'll see if i can find a tutorial.

i want to be able to send encrypted email and post to mailing lists and have a PGP sig so the mail can be verified, so you can tell it hasn't been tampered with. is that all easy to setup? it must be with the GUI preferences Enigmail has.

 

i just found this extension for mailing lists - "reply to list"
here's the readme - http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/thunderbird/README

it looks like you need to patch thunderbird for the extension to work, or wait until Thunderbird 3.0 , but if you use suse you can just follow the instructions. i'm not sure which mailing lists this applies too though
http://dev-loki.blogspot.com/2006/08/thunderbird-with-reply-to-list.html

 

i myself dont know too much about mailing lists but the website says this:

 

thanks, i just found the correct link -
http://open.nit.ca/wiki/index.php?page=ReplyToListThunderbirdExtension&7

i don't bother much with mailing lists, but they are really great so i'm going to force myself to start using them. i've always thought of them as outdated, but they're not at all. here's a good one to subscribe to - securityfocus Focus-MS

you can then receive all the lastest known exploits and find out what to do about it.
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/88/description
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/88/description#0.3
here are their other lists
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive

here are the ubuntu lists
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/
this is how one looks like in a browser -
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-uk/2006-October/thread.html
if you subscribe you can use your email client like a forum

here's the mailing list on the ubuntuforums -
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=6

look at a thread and you can see they posted using email
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=89289

i don't think Debian (the distro ubuntu, knoppix and many others are based on) even has a forum, everything is done on their mailing lists