KB 102

How do I delete mail messages without opening them first?

Article:102
Created:2001-01-22 11:35:38
Categories:
  E-mail
  MacOS-9
  Virus Information

Question or Symptom

My understanding of harmful email viruses is that these come in the form of an email attachment that one should avoid opening. The email itself is not harmful, as that can only be text or html. Is that correct? If not, how does one avoid opening an email? I'm not able to delete an email without selecting it first, and once I select it, it opens.

Resolution

There's a note at http://www.ufaq.org/ which explains how to get Netscape to only show you the message subjects and not automatically open them. You're a little safer on the Mac because most of the "autorun" email viruses only infect Windows users running Microsoft programs (in particular, Outlook). But, just because someone hasn't found a way to autorun a virus from email on a Mac with Netscape yet doesn't mean that someone won't figure it out next week :-) Displaying the subjects first is a reasonable way to stay a little safer, although it might be somewhat inconvenient.