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Is there a way to open an email from an uknown sender safely to find out who they are

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by duggabe

zigger
zigger

I have received an email and the senders name is unknown to me. Is there a safe way of opening it so that I can establish its contents. Normally I would just delete but there are special circumstances when it would useful.

I have received an email and the senders name is unknown to me. Is there a safe way of opening it so that I can establish its contents. Normally I would just delete but there are special circumstances when it would useful.

Chosen solution

There is no absolutely safe way, but if you DO NOT allow remote content from all senders, and you do not click on any links, your odds are pretty good.

Some emails are obviously spam based on subject. Spam/Junk mail filtering helps sort out the suspicious ones also.

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duggabe
duggabe

Chosen Solution

There is no absolutely safe way, but if you DO NOT allow remote content from all senders, and you do not click on any links, your odds are pretty good.

Some emails are obviously spam based on subject. Spam/Junk mail filtering helps sort out the suspicious ones also.

duggabe
duggabe

Here is an update to my former response.

Here is a safe way to look at an email which you think is suspicious:

  • right click on the message and select 'Save As'
  • the file name will be the email subject followed by an extension of .eml
  • store it in a folder you can find easily, such as your Documents
  • using your file explorer, right click on the file name and open it with Notepad or a similar text editor (NOT Thunderbird!)
  • even though the format is not easy to read, you should be able to see who sent it to you, and also read the message text.

Since you are looking at the message in a text editor, there is no chance a link can activate something bad. I have used this method many times, and have found several spoofs of email names of my friends.