Does an unopened malicious attachment pose a threat?

[jmt356]

I received an email with a malicious attachment (DHL-INVOICE.ace). Does letting this email sit in my Outlook inbox pose a threat or does the threat only arise if I open the attachment? I am reluctant to delete the email as I want to have a record, but if just having it in an email is a risk then I will delete it.

[StuartR]

There is a risk that you, or someone with access to your inbox, might open the attachment by accident one day

[HansV]

Stuart is correct. You could move the email to a separate folder named Malicious or Do Not Open or something like that. The email itself does no harm as long as the attachment isn't opened.

[Leif]

Bear in mind that as long as you have it on your PC, your trusty anti-virus software should be alerting you to it on a regular basis. If it doesn't, that may be something else you need to worry about...

[Doc.AElstein]

A lot of places have a spoof place where I typically would send anything like that on to , before mostly deleting. A few I keep in my spam folder for a while. I think if I was using Outlook then I wouldn’t store anything like that very long

Alan

Examples that I have used to send spam and spoof on to :
spam@dhl.com
stop-spoofing@amazon.com
spoof@paypal.de