I need some computer/email advice. I work from home 3 days a week. I can log into my work pc with a remote desktop type app, but much of my work is email and it is easier and faster to just check email with my home/personal laptop without logging into the remote PC, and I am using Thunderbird currently as my email client, but it is getting really slow. Our company uses Exchange 365 and I have been hesitant to use Outlook for email at home because I'm not sure about privacy issues. I know Exchange 365 server has some scary features that IT can use - remote wipe, change passcode, remote lock, etc. If I am running Windows 10 on my laptop, can I safely use Outlook as my email app without compromising my privacy? Can the IT department do anything to my PC other than lock out or wipe my corporate email? The Microsoft info indicates that Windows 10 does not support remote device wipe or lock. Can I set up multiple accounts in Outlook to access both personal and corporate email accounts without any crossover or privacy concerns on that? I know the general answer is keep work entirely separate from personal, not use my personal laptop at all, but that is not realistic for me and there is no company policy disallowing that. I like how Thunderbird is working for me EXCEPT that it won't allow it to compact files on the Exchange email address and that seems to be bogging it down, it just keeps getting slower and slower and is becoming impractical to use. I use the ExQuilla add on to make it compatible with Exchange 365. Any specific advice on how Exchange 365 can or cannot invade my computer or give the IT department access to anything other than the corporate email account would be appreciated, OR ideas on how to get Thunderbird working more efficiently, would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I would not set up work and personal accounts on the same email application. It is too easy to send the wrong thing to the wrong people or dump something into the wrong saved mail folder. Also be careful about the applications accessing the contacts list from the other application(s) crossing work and personal. An email meant for your friend Michael could go to work Michael or the other way around. That could wind up with anything from a bit of embarrassment to termination. Just not worth the risk. If your work allows it, I will say go ahead and set up Outlook for your work and keep Thunderbird or whatever else you want to use for your personal email, so you never get them accidentally crossed up. If you are paranoid, just use Outlook in the web browser. It isn't great, but it works and shouldn't be able to dig into your OS from the browser.
Just use outlook.com and log in via browser. The OWA experience has gotten significantly better over the years. If you do install outlook from your tenant, pay attention to the pop-ups. It will tell you if you're allowing remote wipe, etc. and you have to accept or decline it before proceeding.
OK, thank you both, using Outlook in a browser is a good idea and it had not occurred to me. I used to use that occasionally but it was clunky - but tried going in that way today and it definitely looked updated. I'll try that and see how it goes. I imagine that getting the Outlook account off Thunderbird will speed it up a lot for my personal mail address.
Like Thrak410 said, use the web version of outlook at outlook.com. If your company uses Microsoft hosted Exchange servers, you should be able to log directly into your account from there. If not, ask your IT folks for the web access URL for their Exchange server and use that. Once logged in, Outlook will load in your browser and work almost exactly like the Outlook application. No need to add your work account to your personal email client. Its not recommended for many, many reasons.
