Reading mail in SmartXHosting webmail is a tap-and-go affair, but the details — header display, attachment counts, read receipts, image loading, and the phishing warnings Axigen shows — are worth understanding. This tutorial walks through the message view, the actions around it, and a few habits that protect UK mailboxes from the phishing patterns doing the rounds in 2026.
If you want to re-mark a message as unread (to remind yourself to come back to it), use the message Options menu and choose Mark as unread.
An open message contains these elements:
Every email carries a header with routing metadata — the intermediate mail servers, authentication results, spam score, and so on. For diagnosing why a message went to Spam, for verifying a suspected phishing attempt, or for building a forensic record for ICO notification, the full header is your single most useful artefact.
To view it in webmail: open the message, then choose Options › View source (desktop) or the three-dot overflow menu › View full headers (mobile). Copy the text into a plain-text file if you need to hand it to your IT team or to SmartXHosting support.
Key header lines to scan:
By default, Axigen blocks images hosted on external servers until you explicitly load them. This is a privacy control — loading an external image reveals to the sender that you opened the message and pings your IP address. Tracking pixels used by marketers and by some phishing operators rely exactly on this.
When a message contains blocked images, you will see a banner at the top of the message body offering Display images. Click it only for senders you trust. If the sender is in your address book and you always want their images to load, use Always display images from this sender to whitelist them.
Below (mobile) or above (desktop) the body, a toolbar offers the main actions:
You can move between messages without returning to the list:
J for next, K for previous (Gmail-style). Press ? to see the full shortcut reference.To return to the folder list, tap the folder name (e.g. < Inbox) in the top-left of the view.
On the message list, read status is shown visually:
Opening a message marks it read automatically. If you want to mark several messages read or unread without opening each, select them in the list (tap-hold on mobile, Ctrl+click on desktop) and use the bulk action toolbar.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) publishes regular threat guidance for UK businesses; the 2026 landscape has these as the top three patterns reaching UK mailboxes:
[email protected].*.microsoft.com or *.microsoftonline.com domain.If Axigen flags a message with an authentication warning banner, take it seriously. The overwhelming majority of genuine UK business mail authenticates cleanly — a failure is a signal worth pausing on.
Q: Can I change the default folder sort from newest-first to oldest-first?
A: Yes, per folder. Use the sort controls above the message list.
Q: How do I preview a message without marking it read?
A: Hover in desktop webmail shows a tooltip-style preview. In mobile webmail, a long-press opens the preview sheet without marking read.
Q: Why did an image fail to load after I clicked Display?
A: The external host may be down, or your firewall may be blocking the image URL. Rare, but happens with images hosted on small providers.
Q: Does webmail render Outlook's rich HTML correctly?
A: Yes, for well-formed messages. Occasionally Outlook's Quoted-Printable encoding produces display quirks for emoji or Polish characters; this is a sender-side issue.
Q: How do I report a phishing message?
A: Use the Report phishing action in the overflow menu. SmartXHosting also recommends forwarding the message (with full headers) to [email protected], the UK government's phishing report inbox run by NCSC.