Identifying E-mail Sender by Cursor Hovering

[kaneohe]

I learned some yrs ago on this forum that you can identify the e-mail address of the sender of an e-mail by hovering the cursor over the sender's name.
Also the url of a website of a link in the e-mail. This has been useful to know.

A few questions:
1) just noticed that 2 friends with aol.com have no such info when I do that.
Pretty sure that they wouldn't know how to "turn off" that feature so is that
universal w/ aol.com
2) seems that almost all yahoo.com e-mail users that I received mail from have the identifying info when I hover. However DW who also uses yahoo mail does not have such info revealed. Why not? If relevant, she uses an ipad
to look at e-mail.

3) slightly different topic.......at one time it was safe or relatively safe to open
e-mails if you didn't click on any of the links contained within. Still true (or was it ever)? Or can just opening an e-mail be a problem?

 

[GrayHare]

That hover popup is not universal, instead it's a feature of whatever email viewer you are using. In most email viewers it is safe to view the text of an email; attachments and links are where malicious content can hide. Note that if you allow your email viewer to display pictures, the pictures can reveal to the sender that you have seen the email, along with information about when and where you did so.

 

[braumeister]

That hover popup is not universal, instead it's a feature of whatever email viewer you are using. In most email viewers it is safe to view the text of an email; attachments and links are where malicious content can hide. Note that if you allow your email viewer to display pictures, the pictures can reveal to the sender that you have seen the email, along with information about when and where you did so.

Good advice. I've restricted my email for years to not allow pictures to be shown unless I specifically authorize it (each one has a little button at the top that says "Load Images").
Also be aware that you might not even know that there was a picture in the email, because it can be just one pixel in size.

 

[Rustward]

Most mail clients provide a way for you to see the headers; that's where the information you want is located. Just look for a button that says something like "headers" or "display headers".

With some clients it is not obvious how to do this. For example, the mail client I use requires a right click on the message in the inbox, then click properties.