I love Juno’s free email, and have used it for over 3-4 years now. But one thing about it that I really hate is that there is no way to avoid opening an email if it happens to be the first new one received. There’s no way to simply display the subject, and open the message only if I want to. Similarly, there’s no way to delete an unread message without opening it first.
Any Juno users out there know what I mean? Any suggestions?
Eh, you get what you pay for dude.
Yes, I know exactly what you mean, but I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it. I’m using Juno 4.0 (you don’t say which version of Juno you’re using)… I dunno whether Juno 5.0 is supposed to change that, but I’m not interested enough to download 5.0 and take the chance that it’ll screw up everything else.
However, here’s some comfort. Viruses don’t usually travel in the body of the e-mail, in the text. They’re usually in an attachment, hence the repeated warnings from computer experts, “Never open an attachment.” What you do is, before you open it, you Save it As A Text File.
What you do is, if you get an e-mail that has an attachment, you left-click on the thing that says “Show Attachment”. A little list pops down and says what kind of file the attachment is, whether it’s .txt or .gif or .jpg. AFAIK, viruses only travel in .txt-type files, not as .gif or .jpg files.
So then you right-click on the name of the attachment, say it’s billyspeech.txt, and another little list pops down and gives you 3 choices: Open, Save, or Copy. You choose Save. Left-click. It brings up the My Documents folder, and prompts you with its best guess as to what you might want to name it. So you save it as a .txt file, then you can go look at it in Notepad. Do I need to tell you how to do that? I will if you want me to…
It helps if you jot down the file name, before you open Notepad and start looking around for your attachment file.
The tricky part in all this is figuring out where Windows is hiding My Documents. Usually it’s on the Desktop. I have an awful time keeping track of it.
Anyway, you look at the .txt file in Notepad. If it’s nothing but gibberish, then that’s probably a virus. A real .txt file attachment, from a friend, would be sensible text–“I’m attaching the text of my grandson’s valedictorian speech, isn’t he brilliant…”
AFAIK, viruses only travel in .txt-type files, not as .gif or .jpg files
You’re sort of right on this one. Viruses are carried on emails either by an attached infected program (.exe) or a nasty VBscript file that is triggered by the email program or the browser (usually ends in .vbs) Duck Duck Goose is right about the VBscript viruses being simply text files and are harmless if you save it as .txt, but usually, these files are hidden in confusing file names, like “picture.jpg.vbs” or “plans.doc.vbs”. Check the names of those files carefully.
Thanks, all. I’m on Juno 4.0 now, and what has worried me is the HTML that gets run automatically. Can’t people put nasty Java scripts and stuff into such emails – even NOT as an attachment?
I suppose I should have the same worries about any web page that I visit. I’ve been a professional programmer for almost 20 years now, but the whole business of viruses is above my head. Thanks for your advice.
On the Juno Read page, up at the top:
Options, E-mail Options, HTML E-mail preferences. Read this. If you click on Change security Settings, it brings you to the Security Menu found under Internet Options in the Tools menu up here on the Web.
I have mine set on the Default which is Medium security. If somebody sends me an e-mail that has an HTML link in it, it’s blue and I can click on it and go directly to that website. Presumably, someone could send me a link that would turn into a virus when I clicked on it. However, since I don’t have anything more important on my computer than Duke Nukem scores, I don’t worry too much about getting viruses.