Help with a suspicious email

[daniel_blacke]

I am waiting for a couple of e-mails concerning some class-action lawsuits and an inheritance... I got an email that seems to be about one of those topics but I am suspicious.... I do not want to open junk and wind up with pc issues. I have always been very leery of emails and therefore actually have very little experience with them.

I would like to see what's inside this email. Can I safely open it? I know that many bad issues can happen from opening attachments, but will just opening the body of the email expose me to potential risk?

 

[COLGeek]

What service do you use to access your email (GMail, for example)? Do you access via the web or via an app like ThunderBird?

 

[boosted1g]

Reading through webmail is always safer then using thunderbird or Microsoft outlook (not to be confused with outlook.com you access in your web browser) because you cant really execute malicious code form just viewing an email in a web browser.

As far as the attachment goes:
First off all do you know the sender? If it is for sure the law office or company you are expecting things from this is likely to be legit
If using chrome browser or gmail you can read common file types(pdfs, word docs, excel files, etc) in the browser also making it more safe.
If nothing else, download the attachment, scan with a decent anti-virus and then open it.

 

[daniel_blacke]

I use Gmail in my Chrome browser. Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate the help.