Disable the Preview Pane For Safer Computing & Less Spam*
Disable the Preview Pane For Safer Computing & Less Spam
[note: if you are looking to see who won this week’s contest, click here.]
A recent article on spam (e-mail) prompted a reader to send in this good question,
Q: “Hi Paul –
You wrote “don’t even open e-mail from unknown sources.. doing so can/will mark your e-mail address as a “live” person, …”.
How do we delete without opening a specific email message? Even while deleting in bulk the first email in the highlighted selections opens. I’m using Outlook Express. Thanks for your help!”
* What is being referred to is the feature common to e-mail clients called the “Preview Pane”.”
A: Dear Reader–
You’re correct that most webmail settings, and e-mail clients, (by default) have what is called a “preview pane”, which opens the first (topmost/most recent) e-mail in your Inbox, and shows you the first few lines of the e-mail. Yes.. this will trigger whatever the spammers/hackers are using to verify receipt (such as downloading an invisible jpeg). Because of this, I always turn the Preview Pane off.
To do this in OE, click on the View menu and select Layout.
Then in the Preview Pane Properties, uncheck the “Show preview pane” checkbox.
BTW– by exploring Properties/Options/Settings/Preferences (different names for the same thing), you can disable the preview pane in every e-mail viewer.. (i.e., Thunderbird), and webmail (i.e., Hotmail, Gmail, etc).
Tip of the day: While many people find the preview window a convenient way to skim their incoming mail, using it automatically opens your machine up to security risks — especially if you are allowing HTML, and/or images, as the OE pictured above does — and tells anyone who’s interested that yes, your.name@isp.com is a valid address: suitable for spamming.
The spammers (and advertisers) collect lists of these validated addresses and sell them to each other.
I advise disabling the feature, and doing without the ’speed enhancement’ of previewing. Doing so will reduce the amount of spam you receive, improve your privacy, and close the door on one of the methods hackers can use to infect your machine.
Today’s free download: Open Office A new version of very popular free office suite is now available. Support for Office 2007 formatting and improved PDF creation in Writer highlight the big additions for business users. A new Start Center provides a launching pad and makes it easier to switch between tools.
Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. 
post to jaanix.
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Oops!Backup Winners
The folks at Altaro have generously donated some licenses for Oops!Backup to me, to award to my readers. 
I sincerely thank them for that. Oops!Backup is a ‘time machine’ backup for Windows program that creates “backup revision copies” of the files on your computer.
With Oops!Backup, you do not have to be “computer savvy”, and you set-it-and-forget-it. The program constantly monitors your file system for you. I will give you my impressions and some screenshots, but first…
“Plain, straightforward English–I love it. This versioning, continuous-backup package is one of the more impressive I’ve run across…“ — Jon L. Jacobi, PC World magazine, Editorial Review of Oops!Backup
From the publisher:
Oops!Backup is no ordinary backup product: Thanks to its unique BackInTime™ technology Oops!Backup allows you to travel back in time to recover different versions of your important documents, photos or any other files. Oops!Backup is a hybrid backup and version control.
A complete set of screenshots is available here. My comments are toward the end of the announcement article, here. (Also, there is a video demonstration of Oops!Backup “in action”.) A 30-day, fully-functional free trial of Oops!Backup can be downloaded here, Free 30-day trial.
Winners:
As you know, this week’s contest was a little different…
The winners of a single license for Oops!Backup are:
And the 1st Prize winner of a 3 pack of licenses is:
The lucky winners have been sent an e-mail, containing their license key(s), with the subject “Oops!Backup License Winner”. (You may need to check your Junk folder.)
My thanks to David at Altaro for making this event possible, and to all who participated in this contest! Have a great weekend, folks.
Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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