| From: CAREY SCHUG via talk <talk@gtalug.org> I changed the Subject. I hope you don't mind. | question still as a dummy. Qustions are welcome. | I try not to open emails from anybody I don't know, hovering over the | "from" if the subject is unexpected. All this stuff depends on you "Mail User Agent" -- the program you use to read email. I use alpine(1), a CLI MUA. This is out of the 1990s, but it just doesn't automatically do things that cause problems. So I don't know the joys and sorrows of a GUI MUA first hand. | But sometimes the mail program jumps as I click, and I open something I | did not intend to open. What do you mean by "open"? A URL sends your web browser to some place selected by the email composer. Is that dangerous. Potentially. How safe is your browser? The URL can send a payload of, for example, your email address or the particular message that you are responding to. Sometimes email contains something like a .jpg or a spreadsheet. - Pictures have been known to exploit bugs (rarely). Usually those don't target Linux. - MS Office documents can definitely contain malware. Usually those don't target Open Office. | Or a malfeasor might have intercepted an email | I sent and crafted a reply from the person I sent it to.....or even have | compromised their machine and added code to every email from them. Not likely unless you are a high-value target. | Could a script in an email exploit this? "this" means "this CVE", right? Unlikely. | I am not panicing, but I am concerned. It's hard to know what to be concerned about. I think I'm fairly knowledgeable about this stuff but I get surprised some times. To my knowledge, I have not been attacked successfully on my Linux systems (over 25 years). Of course I might not know about very successful attacks. I get attacked at quite some frequency by Bad Guys trying to log into my systems via SSH. Also: I get SPAM, just like everyone else.