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Issue #240: February 26, 2012

Q: Occasionally, I receive an email with an address which I don’t recognize, and I am reluctant to open it.  A friend told me to right click on the message line, go to “properties”, then to “message source” in order to read the email without opening it.  However, I am concerned that it could affect my computer if it has a virus in it.  Is it safe to do this?  It seems to me that if it can be read, it has been opened. 

Susan B.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A: I commend you on being reluctant to open e-mail from unfamiliar addresses.  Too often people treat junk e-mail the same like they would if it was junk paper-mail.  There is a huge difference, and junk e-mail should be handled with far more care.  Think about it this way: your physical mailing address is generally public knowledge, but your e-mail address is not.  When I get e-mail from an address I don’t recognize, it usually means that the sender got my address in some way other than me freely giving it to them, and that is enough in itself to raise my suspicions.

Many would ask, why?  What’s the big deal about reading e-mail, as long as I don’t open any attachments?  Well, one attack vector that perpetrators of malware use is to embed hidden codes within the body of an e-mail.  These codes get executed by the mail reader’s underlying browser tool when the message is viewed.  This can happen even when you don’t really “open” the message, but only look at it in a preview pane.

Susan, your friend that advised you to view the “message source” has an interesting idea, but read below before you try it.  To answer your question, yes, doing that is safe, and the reason is because you’re viewing the raw source of the message instead of having the e-mail reader execute any embedded commands.  The message body will be much harder to read than you’re used to, because the text will likely have various formatting commands embedded that you’ve never seen before unless you’ve done any web development.  My question is, are you savvy enough to recognize malicious code if you even saw it?  It’s not like you’re going to see text that says “Virus begins here” or “Mwahahaha!”  There are also ways to cause a malware payload to be delivered through an embedded reference to something out on the Web.  Many legitimate e-mails contain such references, and it’s difficult-to-impossible to distinguish a good e-mail from a bad one merely by looking at the source.  It won’t hurt to try, but don’t be too disappointed if this isn’t the panacea you’re looking for.

Special Announcement: Many of you have written in over the last couple of years asking whether there is an online archive of columns available.  I.G.T.M. appears in several Freedom Communications newspapers, and on their corresponding websites, and each paper keeps past issues available to some extent.  However, these columns are not usually indexed and searchable by keyword or date without getting all the site’s news content mixed-in.  Well I have heard your pleas, and responded.  Announcing the grand opening of ItsGeekToMe.co – the official home of It’s Geek to Me on the web.  Please note that the domain is .CO and not .COM.  For now, the new site is pretty much limited just to the archive of past columns, and a web form for submitting questions.  Whether it expands to more content will depend on how much use it gets.  Go check it out!


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