Talking about attachments is like abstinence education. "Never open attachments" is correct but untenable advice. The best realistic advice for those who have to open attachments is, do it in Google Drive, never on your own machine.
Don't consider an attachment safe because it came from a trusted party. When they come for your account, it will be in the guise of an attachment or phishing link from someone you know well, and that you've opened dozens of times in the past.
To the extent that you can set policy (like if you're running a political campaign or newsroom), teach people to share documents by sending links to Google docs. Attachment shaming is healthy when all parties in the conversation are in the same organization
I *believe* there's a way to set up Windows that will force attachments to auto-open in Google Drive. If anyone has more info, please share it!
The safest way to view email is likely on an iPhone, iPad or Chromebook with attachments opening in GDrive. If you save attachment to your laptop and upload it to GDrive, take care to delete the local file, or two weeks later you'll wonder "what was this?" and double-click it
When I say "open in Google Drive" in this thread, I mean go to drive.google.com, click on 'new' and choose 'file upload'. Then the attachment becomes Google's problem, and not yours. If you're in Gmail, there's an 'open in Google Docs' link above every attachment preview
If you're a journalist who can't use shared Google docs because you go back and forth with your editor using 'track changes' in attached Word docs... well, you need to remember you're a journalist in 2018. Some behaviors you just have to change, because the risk is too high
Some people will say "I hate Google, so I'm going to use ProtonMail/LibreDrive/this cool new service that opens attachments on the blockchain." Don't be daft. Google has one of the few security teams that can do this right. And they already saw all your email in transit.
The bottom line: talk to your friends and colleagues about attachments, before they learn about them on the street. And do your part to keep others safe!
