Hi @Riverway,
Thank you for your post and for joining the community forum!
I understand your desire to be able to tell if an email is fake without opening it. One thing to watch out for is the sender's email address. They may try to mask the email address, however, so that is not the only thing to rely on. I regret that the other indicators do require that you open the email up. You can see more about reviewing an email here.
If you ever receive an email that purports to be from PayPal that asks you to take action, the safest thing to do is to open a fresh browser window without following any links, type paypal.com into the address bar, and log in to your account from there. Most often, there would be messaging in your account that directs you to take the action described in the email if the email is legitimate.
I hope this helps!
Olivia
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