These days, we are being hit by spam and viruses - it is a minefield when you try to read your email messages. "When in doubt, delete" is a safe (if somewhat paranoid) practice. But, there may be times when you are not sure if the message really was suppose to come to you or not. Is there a way to read your messages without really reading them (that is, without OE actually opening them, and possibly triggering a virus). Yes, there seems to be.
First, make sure you turn off your PREVIEW PANE - that can cause you to open a message before you are ready to! If you want some tips on that, look here : Practicing Safe(r) email with OE (Acrobat 5.0 file - PDF) If you haven't seen that document, that would be a good starting point, before you continue.
Otherwise, here is the technique that seems to be safe (won't trigger a virus or spam email, but will let you "see" what is inside). Again, you would not look at ALL your email this way - it would drive you crazy! Only ones that you suspect.
Step 1) Right click on the email you want to check - should bring up a menu box - select PROPERTIES.
Step 2) The General tab sometime shows useful things (email might be a giveaway - maybe not) - click the DETAILS tab.
Step 3) If you care to dig through the internet addressing garbage at the top (but WHY?) - that might rule it out ... easier to just click the MESSAGE SOURCE button.
Step 4) This brings up a new text window - the source text for the message is there (but we didn't "open" it in the traditional sense). Skip down to the text part of the email (that is, skip over all the address junk at the top) - you should be able to see from the text if this is a real email, or a junk one ... the one below talked about Botox {covered by my red letters}, but you can still see the "Anti-aging, anti-wrinkle" stuff - this can safely be just deleted. (Unless you are on a botox mailing list?) Close the text box with the little "x" in the upper right corner - then click the CANCEL button on the Details dialog box (from step 3).
Step 5) Notice when you return to your email list - the message still shows as being "unread" - we saw inside without actually "opening" it in OE - thus we couldn't trigger any nasty viruses. Now we can right click and delete ... or click ONCE and press the delete key.
Again - you would NOT use this for every email ... just the ones you think might be real, but want to check without opening it the normal way. If you are worried about it - delete it - if there was a valid sender, they can resend it.
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Last Updated = Friday, 03-Feb-2006 22:33:56 EST Of the 52 people that have visited this site, you are the most recent.