Expert: James Filmer - 7/2/2011

Question
QUESTION: hi james,
 i was checking my email last night and noticed an increase in my spam folder. so i opened the folder to see whether any legitimate mail had ended up there. not sure if you're familiar with yahoo mail's layout but it's very vague, with just the sender and the subject shown. and one of them caught my eye, appeared to be important. so i click it to see more.  and as i'm reading the email, the thing seems a bit fishy to me, had some attachments it wanted me to click. so i ended up deleting everything in the spam folder.
 now my question is this: i opened the email to see more, but i didn't click on anything within the email (like links or attachments).  can i get a virus from just opening the email? i've been looking online and some say you can and some say you can't, so i thought i should ask an expert.  the key is i really didn't click or open anything within the email, as soon as i saw that it seemed fishy i deleted it.  i also ran a norton scan on my pc afterwards and it didnt detect anything. should i still be concerned, as i do use the pc for important personal stuff (shopping, etc)?  and if opening an email alone can lead to viruses and malware, should i still continue to check my email anymore? also, is there a way to read the contents of an email without having to actually open it (like click on it in yahoo mail)?  thank you!

ANSWER: You can read any email IF you make sure your email account configuration is set to Block all images and/or HTML. Configure the receiving of messages, only in text mode (another way of putting it). Do not click to allow images or HTML to be open unless you trust the sender 100% (not 99%).



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: thanks james,
 would you happen to know how to change those settings on yahoo mail?  also, should i still worry, as my norton scan did come up clean? (btw, ironically the allexperts response email ended up in the spam folder!) thanks

Answer
No way I could make it easier than Yahoo's instructions.

http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/mail/index.html
There are probably some advanced things I know, it doesn't tell you about, but you need to the basics first.
I always check my Spam boxes. They're not perfect. Legitimate messages go in there sometimes. If you get a lot of Spam, it's more of a pain to find them, but it still best to look. And, doing what you can to reduce Spam is a learning process that really never ends (enrgy21.com has some links to info about anti-spam techniques).

About Norton, fine that is didn't find anything, but it's not perfect either. It can't find everything. What you use in addition to it (or nothing else) is up to you, but be careful with compatibility issues, do a little engine research. Depending on which Norton version, no all antispyware apps, run well with Norton in the background.

If you want more help you'll need to contact me through my site Enrgy21.com. Glad things are working out.