Entourage Preview Pane Questions

[bphillips]

I've always been under the impression that displaying the Preview
Pane was
not a good idea. Is this in fact true?
My understanding was that by displaying the message in the Preview Pane
you
are in actuality opening the email and so if it is a spam message you
are
verifying that they have reached a valid email address and so it is
good
practice to not display the preview pane.

Can I get any feedback on whether this is true or not?

 

[mmmmark]

You're half right--or more accurately, you are right if you are using
Entourage v.X.

Entourage 2004 protects you by not downloading graphics that are not
included directly in the email. For example, an html email can have
graphics that are actually linked to a remote server. In v.X, if you are
using the preview pane and allow these to load, you could unwittingly alert
the sender that they have reached a real email address (which they then can
sell). They evidentally have unique graphics for each address(and even use
blank spacers that you can't see) that identify the email address when it
loads from their server.

Outlook Express on the windows side finally got an update that does the same
thing, but it does not offer the flexibility of loading pictures from known
"trusted" sources (e.g. an Apple newsletter).

If you are using v.X, just be sure to delete (or not preview) mails from
persons you do not know.

-Mark

 

[bphillips]

Mark,

Thanks for your help ad the explanation.

Beth