Greetings all - Wanted to pose a theory of mine that may impact how long I want to continue using Emailer to check my AOL mail, or any mail at all (now there's an ominous thought...)
I've noticed that in many of the HTML spam e-mails that I get and pitch, there's a often a call to a tiny image that - either via coding in its name or directory structure - seems to be very likely linked/related to my e-mail address. In other words, apparently indicates a way of the spammer validating my address: Opening the e-mail generates a "hit" on the image, and by tracking traffic to the image, the sender can thus detect whether the e-mail has been opened. An opened message equals a valid e-mail address. (Naturally, I would expect a spammer this sophisticated to be using an automated process to accomplish all of this.) Here's an example of what I'm talking about, excerpted from a spam message I received tonight: ============= [img src='http://wickedmallards.com/images/7309296280000042232/spacer.gif' heigh t=0 width=0] You have received this notice by request or may have recently become a member of one of our network websites or simply signed up for this service. If you no longer wish to remain with this service, [a href='http://wickedmallards.com/link/7309296280000042232/']Please Click Here[/a] ============= Do you see what I'm seeing? A 0x0 image - what purpose do you see for that other than something covert? And then a multi-digit code for the directory containing the image and a similarly named directory for the supposed "remove me" link. So - (1) Am I just being paranoid here? (2) If not, would the act of E-mailer retrieving my e-mail from AOL be enough to generate the hit, even though E-mailer cannot display images? (3) If the answer to (2) is "yes," would it be any different if the mail were being retrieved from another ISP/e-mail provider, such as my local broadband provider, .mac or another service? On the plus side, if getting mail with CE does not generate the hit that would otherwise be generated by opening the spam in an HTML-compatible mail client, then perhaps CE is a better way of disposing of the spam. On the other hand, if it does generate the address-validating hit, then even my CE filter which purges spam does no real good, because in the very process of downloading and culling the spam I can find, I'm just validating my address for spam yet to be sent. Thoughts? Apologies if this is a topic that's been covered before - and if I'm just off in left field on this. Best regards, Charlie Z ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
