Sam,

As I understand it In Mailwasher the preview pane or the preview window open the mail in either a raw-text mode or a filtered text mode. Neither activates web bugs, virus programs, worm programmes, scripts or tracking links.

The message is brought to your computer in a text format and is not able to cause any action to be taken on your computer. The mail actually exists both on your ISPs server and on your computer.

In Outlook and other programmes mail is brought down as HTML and that allows all the nasties to execute just like visiting a spammers web page. There is usually an option to view the mail as plain text but it isn't 100% safe like Mailwashers preview. You can set Outlook to leave a copy of the mail on the ISPs server too, it just isn't the default.

This is the link to the Mailwasher FAQ.

Joe.

Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas Alva Edison