Just checked my email, and one of the spam emails was listed as opened, which I know for a fact I didn’t do. For one thing, I’d remember it, and for another, reading spam emails is not on my list of activities. I’m a delete-only sort of guy, and no one else uses my 'puter but me. Or I.
Any idea what’s up with that, and should I cover my walls, ceiling, floor and windows with aluminum foil?
nanohedron…
e-deception is rife. but you seem to be a reflective type. you’ll foil the enemy.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. At least “they” aren’t writing instructions on the inside of my forehead in glowing ciphers any more.
I have an email gremlin.
You-Me-“THEM”-Us-It. Anything Else?
All, and none.
…which doesn’t exorcise my gremlin.
Any chance your email set up is such that an email automatically opens if you have the cursor on the listed email item long enough?
Not to my knowledge. I don’t do that, at least intentionally. I just mark their little side-boxes and zap 'em quick and with little ceremony. It’s possible that I opened the mail instead of marking the box, but it’s really unlikely. My recollection is that the email in question wasn’t there yesterday. For what that’s worth…
But I’ll keep an eye out for the cursor thing just in case. Thanks.
This depends on a lot of things. One is: what do you use to open
your email? Outlook? Pine? Or is it webmail, checked in a
browser?
Secondly: what do you mean by “opened”, do you mean “marked
as read”?
As with all computer questions, the more info you give, the better.
If you have one of those “Preview Panes” they count as opening the email.
Recently our network was upgraded and we suddenly had preview panes all over our email. They are a security risk. Keep them closed.
Webmail. I’m not even using Outlook Express right now; I just go directly to my email provider.
By “opened”, I mean clicking the cursor on the unopened mail and opening it. Sorry, I have very poor computer savvy, and so I’m probably having difficulties being clear enough. My provider’s inbox page setup shows an envelope image for accessing the email (flap down if unopened, flap up if opened), a marker box, and a preview pane option for each message sent to me. It’s hard to get them mixed up.
Thanks. I don’t preview spam; it’s obvious, and I don’t care to bother. Good info to remember, though. Thanks!
When I select several messages in Yahoo mail, it often marks as
“read” the first or last one in the list. If such a thing happened and
an error occurred which prevented the message from being deleted,
it would still sit there opened and undeleted. So, it could easily be
something inoccuous. I doubt anyone’s reading your spam for you.
Thanks, fearfaoin. Makes sense put that way. My concern wasn’t so much that someone might be hacking in and reading (but a new paranoia! Thanks!) so much as someone might have found a way to send a self-opening email. Dunno if that’s silly or impossible, but I opened one email that didn’t look like spam (posing as a Federal gov’t. issue) a good while back that unleashed a virus that totally fried my computer when I opened the accompanying attachment, and I view email with grave suspicion ever since unless it’s from someone I know.