Thanks for your responses. The “automatically d/l pictures from my address book contacts” is the solution. To the point about knowing the difference between spam and wanted email: I get some emails that I want that have embedded links and those are the ones I got tired of saying “Yes, go ahead and d/l the graphics.” Actually, it was more that I didn’t like the delay associated with explicitly clicking to d/l them.
Actually, I’ve come up with a fairly simple solution to spam. I don’t have any spam filtering turned anywhere (not on the server or client side). I just have one rule which says if it’s not in the address book then put it in the “Could be Spam” folder. (I’m aware of the “exclusive” option in the spam filter but I prefer this way.) I do end up put a lot of addresses in my address book but I only sync the ones I have marked “sync” so my Palm stays pretty clean.
It does make sense to have E’rage 04 protect my privacy by default. Previously (if I was at all suspicious about an email) I would just go offline and look at it first, which actually now that I think of it was even more cumbersome!
Rowan
Paul Berkowitz wrote on 10/16/04 6:58 PM :
I don't believe that's what Rowan means, Beth. I'm sure he's not partially downloading. Nor is he really talking about spam, although he thinks he is. He's talking about interactive complex HTML messages. Since these messages can contain exploits on your computer (so far, on the Mac, mostly just confirmations of you email address sent back to the sender, who can then sell the information that you're a "live address" to countless other spammers - but someday might contain more invasive spyware) Entourage won't access the URL links contains within the messages, by default. In a rather simplistic manner, it refers to these as "pictures" - but does not mean embedded or attached graphics - those always display. They mean the pictures on web sites accessed by the URL links. Entourage is not actually trying to protect you from the pictures, but rather form the other, more invasive links that come along with the picture links. You have to click the "Download pictures" in the message toolbar every time if you want the pictures and are willing to accept the other links.
In Entourage/Preferences/Security, you can check "Automatically download pictures from my Address Book contacts". The every time you get such a message you can press cmd-= to Add to Address Book. In future messages from that contact will be automatically downloaded. Eventually this will apply to most of them. But - honestly - I would not do this except with messages from senders you know and trust. Although there's not really much danger at the moment - just tons more spam from networks of spammers who buy your email address - that could easily change some day.
