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Identifying Spam Emails w/o Opening?


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#1
TooNew2

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Today my Yahoo Mail sent two (rare for me) Spam messages to my Spam folder; one was obvious, but the other wasn't, particularly because it coincided with another rare occurrence today and could have been something related. In the "From" column, the message had "FB ACCOUNT" and for a title, it showed "YOUR ACCOUNT BLOCKED". So far, the Spam filter has been perfect but I wanted to check this message out without actually opening it. As I understand things, sending it to another mail system like Outlook Express or Pegasus (which would allow me to see the headers) is similar to opening in in Yahoo, in that it can allow the sender to know that the address of the message is a valid one. I don't want to do that.
In Yahoo Mail, each message "Title" in my Inbox is actually a link, so what I did was right-click and then copy the shortcut, then paste it somewhere else like a Google search box where I could see it in detail. What I got ended with:

....kTA&f=1&fromId=A38C2A52@podmostem.cz [Highlight Added]


Which looks very suspicious at best. A Google search of the last part (podmostem.cz) brought up sites about an inn in Czechoslovakia and such, obviously nothing I'm interested in or want anything to do with.

My question is whether there's a better way to get this information and additionally, if one is using pseudoaddresses such as are available in Yahoo, how can one determine which address a message was sent to, something my method above won't determine. Any suggestions, comments or corrections are welcome.
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#2
admin

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The short answer is you really don't have to worry about it, because Yahoo is doing this leg work for you.

Be very careful opening anything in the spam folder. If you do find something in the spam folder that doesn't belong the best thing to do is add the sender to your contacts, and mark as not spam.
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#3
TooNew2

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Be very careful opening anything in the spam folder. If you do find something in the spam folder that doesn't belong the best thing to do is add the sender to your contacts, and mark as not spam.


That was the point of the question; how does one determine details such as who/where a message is from, which address it came to, and what it's about, without opening it? Without these details, I can't know if it belongs in the Spam folder or not...and the same is true of some messages which slip through the spam filter and end up in the "Inbox", which does happen occasionally.

My method gives some information but more would be useful.
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#4
admin

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Your choices are pretty limited. You either look inside the headers like you did, or you set your email client to plain text and view the email. Don't click any links, but you can hover over them to view their destination.

The reason you want to use plain text instead of HTML is because html will load images telling the spammer their message has been read. Increasing the chance you'll get more later. I've also seen exploits, and proof of concept that only require you hover over an HTML link to redirect the browser.
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#5
TooNew2

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Yesterday I got another 'odd' message, this one supposedly from UPS and having a tracking number in the title. I copied the number, went to the UPS website, looked the number up and got a response saying the number belonged to a package that had been delivered to Florida weeks ago. Obviously not mine. Partly out of curiosity, I called UPS and talked to an agent who determined that package had both been sent from and returned to the same address, so the agent thanked me and turned my information over to their security department.
If I had sent packages to Florida recently, my suspicions might not have been so great. I wonder what my 'copy and paste' method would have shown; I didn't try it.

Yes, the spam filter has been very good and accurate too.
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