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I want the email delayed when I click on it so the person/spam sending doesn't know it was opened

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  • Last reply by Matt

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As soon as I click on an email, it is opened, so the sender knows it is a valid email address. Other email programs I have used in the past let me delay the emails for 10 seconds so I could open it, decide if it was spam, and delete it before they ever knew it was opened. I can't find that option anywhere on Thunderbird. Isn't there an option to do this in Thunderbird???

As soon as I click on an email, it is opened, so the sender knows it is a valid email address. Other email programs I have used in the past let me delay the emails for 10 seconds so I could open it, decide if it was spam, and delete it before they ever knew it was opened. I can't find that option anywhere on Thunderbird. Isn't there an option to do this in Thunderbird???

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ddw170 said

As soon as I click on an email, it is opened, so the sender knows it is a valid email address.

Only if you have remote images turned on and the sender embedded a web bug in the email.

While is is a common misconception that the sender is notified when you open an email, they are not. Any notification falls under two types.

  • The sender requests a delivery notification. When such an email is received Thunderbird asks you is you want to send the notice.
  • The sender uses web bugs. This describes almost all commercial "selling" mail. From Ebay and Facebook to your local real estate office. These web bugs only load if you load remote images, either for just that mail or all mail in general.

The option to delay marking an email as read is just that a local setting that marks the email read after an elapsed period of time. but if you do adjust it, you will also have to adjust the junk settings for the account as they routinely mark mail as read when they place it in the junk folder.

The settings for the delay are in options > display > Advanced.

The global settings for junk are in Options > security > Junk. Although you should check the setting in each email account as well to ensure they are how you like them.