Yes, if you use Torbutton, the attachment itself will be downloaded
only via Tor.
I believe this is the short answer to your question, though everything
else Mike said is good to keep in mind as well, especially in
situations where paranoia is appropriate.
This is especially dangerous if you are using Yahoo Mail, because even
if you trust the person who sent you the document, your attachment
will be downloaded in plaintext (via http, not https).
Watch out for this. Yahoo's *login* page for webmail and other
services may be HTTPS, but this reverts to plain HTTP once you're
actually viewing your mail and downloading attachments. A simple
solution for secure webmail at the moment is using Gmail and the new
Firefox addon "HTTPS-Everywhere" available from
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere . This addon is *NOT* magic, as
it only works with the particular list of websites available on its
option page, but making sure "Google Services" is checked in it's
options will allow all Gmail connections (including downloading
attachments) to happen over HTTPS.
~Justin Aplin
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