Is it safe to read the source of an e-mail?

Some e-mails will add you to some sort of botnet the moment you read the mail (I'm not actually sure if this is a botnet, but I receive spam mails from regular people all the time. So I assume it is). But it's sometimes hard to tell which e-mails are legitimate and which aren't. Hotmail offers an option to look at the e-mail source, from which I can easily make up if it's legitimate. But I'm wondering if you're safe when only reading the source?

As a clarification, the "source" is the plain text e-mail. I'm using hotmail in Waterfox 12.

Simon Verbeke

Posted 2012-05-22T18:53:00.727

Reputation: 3 553

Source? Like the person who sent it to you? umm.... – Supercereal – 2012-05-22T18:55:57.253

@Kyle I literally translated it from the dutch "berichtbron" to "source", meaning the plain text e-mail. – Simon Verbeke – 2012-05-22T18:57:51.030

Anyone mind explaining what's bad about this question? – Simon Verbeke – 2012-05-22T19:02:03.190

That would be a big difference... also it's only plain text if the email is actually plain text. It could also be html or rich text... Either way it's not going to tell you anything other then if the links point to the wrong location. For example I could link http://google.com to hackyouraccout.ru. Keep in mind if there is a script embedded in the email are you going to know what it's meant to do?

– Supercereal – 2012-05-22T19:06:31.000

Nothing, it was bad when it sounded like you were asking, "is it okay to look at who sent me an email." You are missing a bit though like your browser, mail client, OS... all this matters as certain browsers, mail clients, and OS's have different levels of security. What's okay to view in thunderbird on Ubuntu may not be okay to view on XP with Outlook 03. – Supercereal – 2012-05-22T19:08:04.803

"Some e-mails will add you to some sort of botnet the moment you read the mail" - This is false. You cannot be infected with malware by just reading an email. – Ramhound – 2012-05-29T13:20:50.927

Answers

Unless there are serious issues with both your browser and the site you are viewing the e-mail on, you have nothing to worry about if all you do is look at headers, and the body of the e-mail.

Malware is not magic. It can't just stick itself into your computer because you are looking at something that a trusted party (the e-mail provider) put together.

soandos

Posted 2012-05-22T18:53:00.727

Reputation: 22 744

Only less than a half of it was put together by a trusted party; the body and some headers come from the email sender. While this usually isn't a problem, there have been cases when a browser tried to render a plain text file as an image, or such. – user1686 – 2012-05-22T19:16:49.420

1If some third party was able to break a browser's rendering in that way, there is a serious problem, and this e-mail header issues is the least of it. – soandos – 2012-05-22T19:24:09.193

Yes, it is totally safe. Nothing can happen when viewing the source because it is output in raw form and not interpreted by the client.

Christian Vincenot

Posted 2012-05-22T18:53:00.727

Reputation: 374