Windows 7 - Window Live Mail Windows Mail and Similar Clients

It has always been my belief that those who use Windows Mail or Windows Live mail and have it set to show the preview pane, will allow a potential virus to spread .Once you download and have it in the preview pane, it is the same as opening the email. Until I find out that this is not true, I have eliminated the preview pane, which can be done from the View Tab.

I have done the same thing in Windows Live Mail, although mainly just because I find it annoying. If I need to read the email, I'll open it, I don't need it on display while I'm sorting old messages.

I'm pretty sure that you're right about viruses being able to spread through the preview pane. But doesn't Outlook also have this "feature"?

Yes it does. Think about it, the email is downloaded to your computer with the text.

I don't use the preview pane, don't open any emails from people I don't know, and have strong AV protection on incoming emails. I've never gotten a virus from an email.

I'm really not sure how the preview pane is supposed to be useful. Is a double-click that much harder than a single-click? And if someone single-clicks, isn't more likely they want to sort or perform some other action on the email, rather than read it?

My logic anyways...

Good point, Thanks for the tip Rich!

Indeed, never had a problem with that yet but thanks for the tip.

As far as I know, the preview pane is partiailly designed to or has a secondary functionality to preview emails 'safely' without opening them (assuming it actually does that properly with no bugs if it is designed that way), unless the sender is on your safe senders list, by default it only shows the actual text in the email and actually doesnt download the remaining data (attachments, images, malicious code/files etc.) unless you either configure it to always do that for everyone, or add them to the safe senders list. Can anyone verify/expand on any of this?