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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.
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 – 2012-05-22T19:06:31.000Nothing, 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