Can You Get a Virus from Opening an Email? Just Opening Is Safe

Can Opening an Email Give You a Virus?

Yes, viruses can spread through emails. Due to this, you may ask: can I get a virus from opening an email? Here, we will directly tell you the answer: your computer will not be infected by viruses if you just opening an email without opening the attachments or clicking links in it.

Emails you send or receive are mainly text or HTML documents. Opening an email is just like opening a text file or a web page using your web browser. A text file or web page will not affect your computer. It is safe to just open an email.

After opening an email, you may discover that there is an attachment or a link that may contain spam, virus, or malware. Is it safe to open spam mail? Likewise, if you just open an email but do not open the attachment or link in it, you should not worry about the virus issue. No matter you are using Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, or another web-based or desktop email client, it is safe to just open an email even there is a suspicious attachment or link in it.

How an Email Infects Your Computer?

You should admit that some emails intend to infect your computer by using the .exe files or inserted links attached in the emails. But the attachments only work after you click them to open or run them.

A long time ago, an email can run JavaScript code and the infected viruses can affect your computer. Can opening an email give you a virus? Of course, not. Now, this bug is fixed. Emails can’t use JavaScript anymore. Some email clients even don’t automatically display the images you receive.

To protect your computer, you need to make sure that you are using the latest operating system, the updated web browser, and the newest version of Windows security software.

Should You Open This Email?

Now, we will show you how to decide whether to open an email you receive and what to do to protect your computer.

1. Keep your operating system, web browser, and your Mail client up-to-date. The latest version of the software can always fix the bugs and holes in the previous versions. Some of the bugs can make your computer easily get attacked. To protect your computer from possible risks, you need to update all software on your computer to the latest versions.
2. Install professional antivirus software on your computer. At times, your computer may get affected without knowing it. It is necessary to install professional antivirus software on your PC to protect the device from viruses and malware.
3. Don’t open suspect attachments. If you receive an email with an attachment, you need to first check whether the email is from a person you know and whether it is an email you ask for. Please carefully check the sender’s email box because some hackers use a fake email box to send spam and viruses.
4. Check carefully the links you receive. If the link you receive seems to lead you to download a program, you should be careful. If it is a strange link you don’t, you should not click it. However, if you have already clicked it, you should not download software from it.

Can you get a virus from opening an email? After reading this post, you should know it is safe to just open an email. However, if the attached items or links are not what you know, you should not click them.

Tip: Recover Your Data

If you lose your data due to a virus attack, you should use anti-virus software to find and remove viruses from your computer and then use free file recovery software to get your data back. You can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a professional data recovery software.

With the free edition of this software, you can recover up to 1 GB of files without paying any cent.

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If you want to use this software to recover more data, you need to use a full edition of this software.