A number of sources recommend deleting either unwanted e-mail messages or messages which contain a suspected virus, before reading the offending material. With Windows 3.1 (and IE 3.02) I cannot find any way in which to delete such messages without them being displayed since, once they are highlighted they
automatically appear on the screen and consequently are read. Could you please advise how to delete unwanted messages, without going through the process of highlighting them first, thereby incurring the possibility of downloading a virus.

The simple answer is that you cannot stop your email reader from displaying the email message once it has been highlighted. Although the chance of an unprovoked attack being launched is minimal, new email programs have functions to prevent the initiation of a virus. In Outlook Express, if you do not shut it down properly, then the last displayed message will not be displayed (a message tells the user when this has happened) incase the message had something to do with it not being shutdown properly. If it still bothers you there are precautions you can take: (i) Do not view the attachment list or attachments or any suspicious emails because this may initiate a virus. (ii) If you keep getting repeated mail from a source that may cause malicious damage to your computer, use the ‘filters’ option in your email reader. Using this you can filter the email that you download (eg. you can set it so that if an email is received from unwanted sources it can be deleted straight away without being read).