[X-Newbies] Dealing with Spam

[Michael Winter]

On Jul 3, 2005, at 1:21 PM, silvo conticello wrote:

>>  I get the impression that much Spam is sent on spec and that
>> both opening or deleting them merely confirms an address to be valid.
>>
> Deleting (w/o opening) does not send any confirmation.

But in apps like Mail, its not always clear how to delete a message  
without opening it -you click on it, it opens in the viewer pane.  
IIRC, for Mail, double click on the divider between the top "list"  
pane and the bottom "view" pane. That will make the window one big  
list pane. You can then select messages and delete without them  
opening. Double click the divider (now at the bottom of the window)  
again to return it to its previous position.

I should say I'm a little skeptical about this method. It was  
described by one of the Mail developers who used to frequent the list  
(Cricket, IIRC). I was always a little suspicious because in my mind  
the message could technically still be opened, just not displayed  
(displayed in a window with zero height).

> Opening, gives a confirmation only if there are hidden links in the  
> email. I don't know for other programs, but in Mail if a program is  
> labeled as junk, any link/image won't be displayed (thus you can  
> consider them safe).
> In this view, it is safer not to have the viewer panel open in the  
> Inbox: the viewer panel opens automatically any selected message in  
> he mailbox.

The safest way in Mail, is go to the "Viewing" panel of the  
Preferences, and make sure "Display remote images in HTML messages"  
is not checked. That prevents Mail from contacting a remote server to  
"fetch" an image that was not sent as part of the message -which is  
the act that confirms the email address. Keep in mind that prevents  
images from showing in some legitimate email as well, but Mail puts a  
nice little button at the top you can click to download the images if  
you want -which I only do with email from someone (or company) I know.

-Mike