Outlook Junk Mail Folder Question

Question

When viewing mail in my inbox, no previews appear, however, in my junk mail folder, preview messages appear in plain text form with active content removed. Is this safe? May I change the junk mail setting so that it also will not open a preview pane? I understand that this will make it a lot harder to determine if I am reading junk.

fireberd · Answer

I have Outlook 2003 set to not preview any messages - inbox or junk mail. Generally you can tell from the header if it's junk, but if you must you can open one to see what it is - opening it is no different than the preview pane.

Dr. Lawrence Ho · Answer

Hi, I decided to turn off both reading panes. Outlook has been a little weird since I installed IE7.

fireberd · Answer

I haven't noticed any difference with I.E.7. I ran the RC1 version until the 'final' came out.

Mary G · Answer

Individual folders can have the Preview Pane on or off. In each folder in OL 2003, select View, reading pane and it will remember the setting. You can turn it off some folders, on in others.

Dr. Lawrence Ho · Answer

Mary, thank you. I just discovered this. I am new to Outlook. Its menus are different than those found in Outlook Express. In View, I have the option of turning the reading pane on or off. It took a while to realize that this meant the the preview pane, and longer to realize I could set each individual folder. Outlook has very good spam filtering and is compatible with Lotus Notes. My former McAfee spam filter had many quirks, not allowing Lotus Notes or mass mailings as examples. After installing IE7, Media Center would consistently crash. Breaking tradition, I answered the 'send report box' and to my surprise,was directed to a patch download that fixed the problem.

NemesisDB · Answer

what's the negative to previewing junk email? active content is off. hyperlinks and images are off. all it does it display text that was in the original message. is there a risk I'm missing?

Dr. Lawrence Ho · Answer

Nemisis, I have been wondering the same thing. However, it appears that McAfee may have picked off two worms from Email never opened but only seen in the preview screens. I am not 100% certain the worms didn't come from Email accidentally opened, of course. I should think that with all active content turned off, previews should be safe, but I recall recommendations not to use the preview screens. These screens have been turned off in my corporate network by I.T. When I used McAfee in the past for spam blocking, its forum experts claimed that Email previewed in its blocked Email screen was safe. I hope you are correct. To preview or not to preview, that is the question.

rickmktg · Answer

NemesisDB wrote:
what's the negative to previewing junk email? active content is off. hyperlinks and images are off. all it does it display text that was in the original message.

is there a risk I'm missing?

The 1x1 pixel planted by spammers feeds back to them that you are a legitimate recipient of email, even though images are off. So you don't see it, but it's there. I think.

Dr. Lawrence Ho · Answer

I suppose that there may be many malignant items not seen in the preview pane. I have great respect for hackers' ability to exploit Outlook.

NemesisDB · Answer

rick, i thought the whole point of outlook only displaying text and not downloading external images (or pixels) was to prevent spammers from realizing you're a live account.

Preview should only display the text portion of the current email. It should not run active content. It should not download anything else (usually embedded images) from other sites. This has been my experiance with Outlook 2003 anyway -- I do remember the preview function being exploited in earlier versions of Outlook (where it would just open/run/download part of the email).

edit: Found it in the help file. The below also reminds me that even normal messages don't auto-download external images on my computer -- I have to explicitely allow.

"By default, Outlook is configured to block external content, such as links to pictures or sounds, in HTML messages you receive. These links are references in the HTML source code to an external location on the Internet. When you open or preview the message, your computer downloads the external content so that the picture can be displayed or the sound played. Sometimes, junk e-mail senders use the downloading of external content by your computer to verify your e-mail address as "valid" and add it to their spam list. For more information see, blocking external content."

Message Edited by NemesisDB on 10-29-2006 12:02 PM

rickmktg · Answer

NemesisDB wrote:
rick, i thought the whole point of outlook only displaying text and not downloading external images (or pixels) was to prevent spammers from realizing you're a live account.

Preview should only display the text portion of the current email. It should not run active content. It should not download anything else (usually embedded images) from other sites. This has been my experiance with Outlook 2003 anyway -- I do remember the preview function being exploited in earlier versions of Outlook (where it would just open/run/download part of the email).

edit: Found it in the help file. The below also reminds me that even normal messages don't auto-download external images on my computer -- I have to explicitely allow.

"By default, Outlook is configured to block external content, such as links to pictures or sounds, in HTML messages you receive. These links are references in the HTML source code to an external location on the Internet. When you open or preview the message, your computer downloads the external content so that the picture can be displayed or the sound played. Sometimes, junk e-mail senders use the downloading of external content by your computer to verify your e-mail address as "valid" and add it to their spam list. For more information see, blocking external content."

Sounds like that's right for '03. I use '02, haven't upgraded.

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Outlook Junk Mail Folder Question

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