I have Hotmail and use Outlook Express to read my mail. The preview pane bugs me. Not only does my system slow down while the ads are loading (unhappily, I get way more spam than actual mail) but I worry about viruses from viewing the attachments.
Is there any greater risk for viruses when using a preview pane? Would I be safer checking my mail on the Hotmail website?
If it is an HTML email it could run a script and do bad things I guess. If you have Norton or another good virus protection program running it should catch viruses in the attachments before they are opened, and stop any scripts in the email and ask you if you want to allow it to run.
The preview pane doesn’t open attachments.
In the newer versions of Outlook Express, all that is happening when you look at Hotmail from within is that it is opening a web browser from within the program to view Hotmail, so it doesn’t make a difference whether you check your Hotmail from OE or from the Hotmail website, you’re essentially doing the same thing.
Later!
Go to View > Layout and turn off the preview pane. I hope you can tell what’s spam without having to open the messages, so when you see one (or thirty), just delete them unread.
What you’ll want to do next is to actually log in to Hotmail on the web, go to Options, and set your junk mail filter to something higher than the minimum, which will divert the spam to the Junk (or Bulk) Mail folder. While you’re there, you may want to use Block Sender and set up some Custom Filters to automatically reject certain messages.
Now go back to Outlook Express, click on the Hotmail header, then un-check the box under “Synchronization Settings” for Bulk Mail. This will make sure that messages in the Bulk Mail folder don’t get downloaded to your computer unless you actually open them. Then either delete the messages in that folder manually (unread) or wait for Hotmail to do its periodic cleanups.
critter42, I don’t think that’s true. That’s the case with versions of Outlook until XP, but Outlook Express actually downloads the messages to your computer.