It's pretty simple. You send people an html formatted email message with a reference to an image on a particular web server. There are a number of ways to tell who has requested the image file that tells you exactly who requested it. For instance, one way to do it might look like:
<img src="http:\\somesite.com\[EMAIL PROTECTED]" height=1 width=1 border=0> Whoever is in charge of somesite.com just checks the web server logs and sees what references are in the logs and immediately knows which email addresses are vailid. The really nasty thing about this is that with email clients such as Outlook or Outlook express, merely previewing the message will expose your email address. This can be a very effective technique for spammers trying to determine valid email addrresses to be used for future spam campagns. The way to prevent yourself from such abuse is to block your email client form using http port 80 (or any other http port). Some personal firewalls make this very simple. Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "CF-Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 12:05 AM Subject: RE: Web bugs, cookies and redirects... > Can you explain this web bug technique, I haven't heard it before. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Brendan Avery [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, 17 January 2002 4:13 PM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: RE: Web bugs, cookies and redirects... > > oops > > > i'm pretty sure that anything generated by <cfheader> would generate a > > warning on nearly as many email clients as any kind of javascript > > would. > > > ______________________________________________________________________ Why Share? Dedicated Win 2000 Server � PIII 800 / 256 MB RAM / 40 GB HD / 20 GB MO/XFER Instant Activation � $99/Month � Free Setup http://www.pennyhost.com/redirect.cfm?adcode=coldfusionc FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
