Mail Security

  • Thread starter Thread starter DBear
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DBear

This question will actually pertain to most email clients, but I intend to
ask specifically about Windows Mail and WLM beta.

My question is, when you "view" a message in the preview pane, is this the
same as "opening" the message? I know that opening a spam message can
sometimes send a message to the originator notifying them that the email
address is a valid one. This is something that no one should do, of course.

If "viewing" and "opening" are synonymous, how can you select a message for
deletion without opening it? Hmmm...methinks it must take a bit of magic...

dbear
 
In Windows Mail, as well as Outlook Express, you can go to the
View menu, click Layout, and then uncheck Preview Pane. You can
then select messages to delete without opening them. You will
need to double-click the message headers to open the message for
reading.

Yes, viewing messages in the preview pane is the same as opening
them.
 
DBear said:
This question will actually pertain to most email clients, but I intend to
ask specifically about Windows Mail and WLM beta.

My question is, when you "view" a message in the preview pane, is this the
same as "opening" the message? I know that opening a spam message can
sometimes send a message to the originator notifying them that the email
address is a valid one. This is something that no one should do, of
course.

If "viewing" and "opening" are synonymous, how can you select a message
for deletion without opening it? Hmmm...methinks it must take a bit of
magic...

dbear
Click to expand...

Your question on deletion of a message without viewing has been answered by
Cyberbear.

If you are concerned about the security aspects of Email, the settings at
tools>options>security should be set to:
2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th check boxes should be selected.
The other setting that will make you sleep easy, is at tools>options>read
tab>select 'read all in plain text'.

If you do know that a particular HTML mail is safe to view as such, then
with the message selected in preview pane, use the key sequence of Alt, V, H
to read the HTML message as it was meant to be seen.
 
viewing in preview pane and OPENING are essentially the same. both can allow phone home operations.

you can add the icon for preview pane to the tools bar and use it to turn the preview on/off to allow selecting for delete.

why not read all the mail then use CNTRL+A to select all then DELETE. instead of deleting individual mails.




(e-mail address removed)



This question will actually pertain to most email clients, but I intend to
ask specifically about Windows Mail and WLM beta.

My question is, when you "view" a message in the preview pane, is this the
same as "opening" the message? I know that opening a spam message can
sometimes send a message to the originator notifying them that the email
address is a valid one. This is something that no one should do, of course.

If "viewing" and "opening" are synonymous, how can you select a message for
deletion without opening it? Hmmm...methinks it must take a bit of magic...

dbear
 
Thanks to all for a lot of good useful info.
Unfortunately I can't find a way to add "preview pane" to the tools bar. The
help files have nothing to say when searching for Tool bars.
I should add that I am in WLM now, not WM.
Do you have a procedure for doing this?
Dbear
 
The toolbar in the current version of WLM can not be customized.
(I expect it will be customizable in the next release.)

I would not be too worried about the security aspect of opening a message.
Modern antivirus programs protect against this type of exploit.

Gary VanderMolen
 
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