I happened upon an interesting post by Staci at Just Bloggled, when she was confronted with a nasty surprise image after opening an email. Staci assumed the email was from a legitimate source, opened it, and got quite a shock. She was very glad the kids weren’t around at the time, either.
I’m going to do a little technology preaching here: never open email with attachments and never open any email unless you are 100% sure you know who it is from. In Staci’s case, she assumed her email came from a friend, so she opened it. When you encounter a large attachment in an email, you can, just to be sure, send an email to the presumed sender, asking them if they did indeed send an email with a photo attached. When it comes to computers, don’t live dangerously!
I’m going to give you a few tips about preventing those “surprises” when you do open the email. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume the email client is Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Live Mail. Depending on your version, the settings may vary. You may have to hunt around a little, but the basic idea is you want to block images in mail.
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1. Block images from loading in your emails until you allow them.
- Select Tools >> Options from the menu.
- Go to the Security tab.
- Make sure Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail is checked.
- Click OK.
The image below is what you will see whenever you open an email. All HTML images are now blocked, as evidenced by the red Xs. The text of the email is still very visible and readable, so you can read the content of the email without the pictures. But you can still choose to view them for this email. Just click on the bar that says “Some pictures have been blocked to help prevent the sender from identifying your computer. Click here to download pictures.”
The email will load and the pictures will now be visible.
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2. View message in raw text format.
I did a quick video to show how to do this. This enables you to look at the raw data behind the email, bypassing the images altogether. Most of what you will see is in HTML coding (and therefore, gobbledegook), but you can make out the test message in the email if you look for it, and you can also see whether an attachment is an image or not. I find this technique useful when looking for IP headers, to see where the email is originating.
These few steps should eliminate most of the unpleasant surprises you’d encounter by opening up a simple email. 
April 10, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I appreciate you using what happened to me as a lesson. However, for the record, the picture wasn’t an attachment. It was directly in the email. I’m not so stupid as to open an attachment.
Furthermore, sometimes you have to open emails when you don’t know who they’re from if you’re waiting on an email from an unknown person. For instance, at the time, I had put in for a payment plan with my HOA. You have to fill out a form to do so on a management site. The management site then forwards it to your HOA. Someone from the HOA gets back to you, not the management company so I had to open it in case it was from them. Another example: my real estate agent often has other people email me stuff when she’s too dumb to do it herself (e.g. when she has to scan something in). Do I know all the names of all the people she works with? No. Sometimes I have blogging companies and advertisers contact me directly. Again I don’t know their names ahead of time. If I went through life never opening emails from anyone other than my mother and a few other people, I’d miss out on a lot.
Also it wasn’t Outlook or the others you listed. It was Yahoo. On Yahoo Mail classic, you only see the sender’s name. You don’t see the email address or anything in the header until the mail is opened. I do have images blocked for all mail that goes to my spam box. This didn’t go there.
To my knowledge, you don’t have an option to do all the raw text stuff with Yahoo Mail classic. Maybe you do in New Mail, but all the advertisements in the new system slows my computer up to much.
If I ever do open an attachment from someone I know, I let Yahoo’s virus program scan it. Then I download it and scan it again with my virus program. I never blindly open it.
I wrote that post to make fun of the situation, not to make myself out as the Dumb Dora of the Year.
April 11, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Good advice. Here’s another tip — Gmail (Gmail.com — the Internet-based e-mail service from Google) is great about weeding out spam. I’ve had great luck with it.
April 12, 2009 at 12:57 am
well these are the things I’ve been doing for a long time now…..
April 12, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I haven´t opened some of my mails in ages. By this time they´re blocked.
Lately, I just don´t have patience to sort all the spam…
Good Easter Sunday to you and your family xx