Grayed out emails in inbox

A week or so ago, a lot of my unread emails began to be grayed out in my inbox. I did an online chat with a customer service person, who advised that the problem was with Safari because that was the program I was using to access the Cox email browser. He suggested that I adjust the screen contrast. However, I tried it with Firefox and got the same result. It is almost impossible to read unless the check box on the individual message is checked. Has anyone else had this problem and how did you resolve it? Thanks.