Vocal Voices

I've just been shunted across to BT Mail from BT Yahoo Mail.

Now with BT Yahoo, you could hover your cursor over an email in the Inbox and it would give you the sender's address - so you could delete it, if necessary, without actually opening it.

With BT Mail, as far as I can see, you can't do this. You have to open the email first, then hover over the sender's name to get the sender's email addy.

Seems to me that's a retrograde step, as it's forcing you to open up all emails before you can check if they are spam, phishing, or genuine? I always thought that you shouldn't physically open emails you were suspicious of, because it was sending a signal back that "you exist" ...... or is that my paranoia taking over again ...

Any thoughts, folks?

Let me talk this through and see if it makes sense.

You can send an email with a request for a return receipt. If your mail client, or your mail system, supports this, then opening the mail will send back a reply to the sender telling them that you opened the mail. Even if you delete it, some systems will send back a reply saying you deleted it without reading it.

But this is on corporate networks. Most ISP's don't allow RR to the internet. Most clients will ask you if you want to send the receipt and give you the chance to block it when it is to the internet. But, of course, you don't know what your web client is doing.

Easiest way to test this is to use something like google as your server and send mails with request return receipt to your mail account. If you get a reply then you know it's working and that your shoddy BT crapware mail client is telling tales out of school.

As for not seeing the full sender, try looking in the settings. There may be something there which allows you to see it.

Alternately get a client on your machine and configure it to read the server, IMAP if possible, POP3 if not and set it to not delete the messages on the server after download.

Best I can think of.

Thanks, Suff.

I'm aware of the "return receipt" mechanism from using corporate emails when I was working (can't remember what mail software we were using now), but I'm not aware that BT Yahoo or BT Mail offer this as an option for outgoing emails, and I've never had a read-reply response option flagged up on any incoming mails. As you say, one has no idea what messages BT might be automatically bouncing back with incoming emails without your knowledge; one can only assume none.

I've had a quick look in the settings for BT Mail and I can't see any tweek that might enable me to preview a sender's email addy before opening it, unfortunately. Just have to live with it and, as we've said on previous threads, continue to be careful.

Ossie do you mean you can't see who the emails are from?
That would seem ridiculous, so I assume you mean the actual origin or something?

I don't use anything like that, just use my noddle as to whether it's someone I think I should be getting an email from, it's usually pretty obvious
Generally speaking, opening an email shouldn't cause any problems, but opening unknown attachments might.

I don't use anything like that, just use my noddle as to whether it's someone I think I should be getting an email from, it's usually pretty obvious

Yes, 99 times out of 100 but ......

Di, being with BT Yahoo, I occassionally got phishing emails purporting to be from BT, (amongst others) ..... so yes, I'm talking about previewing the actual (hidden) originator.

In the Inbox, they showed as being from "BT.com" or "BT At Home", so on, but if you hovered the cursor over the BT.com bit, it told me it was from "a . phisher @ gmail . com" or whatever. So I knew to delete it forthwith, without opening.

Now I've been transferred to BT Mail, I've lost the ability to do that. I have to open the email, then hover over the sender's name in the header to verify where it's coming from.

OK, I appreciate there's no general harm in opening an email per se, just as long as you never click on a link from it - but I could make my decision previously without opening it.

One thing though - backalong a couple of years or so ago, "Big Brother" BT tried to get everyone to go paperless on their billing. They sent out emails telling you you were going to go paperless unless you clicked on a link in that email to confirm you still wanted a paper bill. As far as I'm aware, (I may be wrong and am prepared to be corrected), you couldn't access this choice to register your preference in any way other than through that email link. That was, to be honest, a bit worrying ......

Another problem with BT is that they know phishers spoof their account, so BT Help gives you a list of their email addresses that you can trust. Except the list is not inclusive as they seem to keep changing their addys. And at least once, I've had to resort to asking on the BT Forum if a very professional looking BT email was a phishing one or not. I was told it was ....

So, you could open another email a/c, try them out - yahoo itself, is that different from BT yahoo?
My main email address is aol, and I don't have that 'hover' option, but there's hotmail obviously, gmail, I'm sure there are others?

Diflower wrote:So, you could open another email a/c, try them out - yahoo itself, is that different from BT yahoo?
My main email address is aol, and I don't have that 'hover' option, but there's hotmail obviously, gmail, I'm sure there are others?

Yes, I do have another email account with another provider, but it's not my primary account. Next time I visit there, I'll see if it gives me the hover option. Maybe that hover was something which was just specific to BT Yahoo, and I incorrectly assumed it would be "the norm" everywhere .... !!

No it's the norm for Yahoo. Hotmail (Outlook.com), has an even larger popup with actions. Gmail brings up the vCard box with actions too, if you have the user in your contacts you'll get the picture if there is one.

BT Yahoo is just yahoo with a custom skin.

This change is common with companies who want to do something new but have no idea what is already done. Free offerings are so advanced today that doing it yourself is a huge expense. Something BT is unlikely to go to.

Hence why I never use an ISP mail account. All my FT Orange account mail is forwarded to my Yahoo small business.

I'm not too happy with BT mail.

Every time I log on there no new emails shown, so I log off.
Most times I then get a notice on my screen saying there is a problem
receiving or sending emails, but if I log on again new emails appear.

I've also found that it's useless telephoning BT, as invariably I find myself
talking to some Asian character difficult to understand.

I am, more and more, using GMX for my emails, as they are more reliable.