It's been bugging me lately, that I cannot remember the term for trying to glean information from a letter, by holding the envelope up to the light, and reading through the paper...
I swear this has an official 'term' associated with it...
So I leave it in your hands.

(I used to hang out here alot about 2 yrs ago. Glad to be back. New name, new head space)

thanks!

Oh my, have I actually stumped the magnificent FT community? I cannot believe it...

It might take more than ten minutes, dear.

I thnk that'd be 3 days and 10 minutes...

The last I heard, it's still called snooping. Can't imagine why a special category or word would be created for something done usually to catch another in some transgression or other. It could also be called misappropriation of property, unless one is honing their ESP skills.

..but I will have to use real, live people! egads....how do I 'click' them?
=) I know the guy who first told me the term...I will hunt him down this week..

ttfn

Auntie this is certainly a hard question to find information about. I have searched for an hour so far and haven`t found anything, though I have found a number of sites that were interesting.

Here is one that I found to be most relevant to your original post.

yes, roo, I was finding the internet a very frustrating place to research this word...
gonna make a phone call tomorrow...

=)

It might be called candling, which is a technique used by chicken hatcheries to "examine" the contents of eggs; to test the fertility of eggs in the incubators.

<<One trick i've learned is if you take an air blower, shake it and turn it upside down, spray it on an envelope, you can see the contents, and it will return to normal in about a minute without a trace.>>

I found this on another site but I am still hunting down the actual word.

Have you tried any of the Reverse Dictionaries online?

I vaguely remember hearing a word for it once though I couldn't find it, but I did turn up this fascinating page, with many more tips how to read letters without detection, quite amazing. Mail security

Amazing that people would want to read the mail of the average person. I notice that most of the business envelopes have cuts in the flap which tear when you open them, most annoying when you have sealed an envelope then want to open it to add something else - I then have to sellotape over the flap.

Omnispect doesn't really cover it does it. Will keep trying tomorrow.

I *should have this answered this week... now it's really bugging me...and some of you, um sorry 'bout that eh heh eh eh

I looked and looked and looked and couldn't come up with anything.

What the heck? Just rip it open and give it a read. The recipient didn't know it was coming, anyway. Or maybe that's a federal offense ?

Just changing title back...