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.

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.

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.

Tags: attachments, block images, HTML mail, Outlook, Windows mail