Most mail clients make displaying remote images in HTML optional. I never display images automatically; if I trust the sender, I can click "Show images" button that mail.app puts up.
These invisible images mean that the sender's server server gets hit every time one of their emails gets opened (unless you've set the option correctly). You can bet that the two 40-character 'folder names' encode your email address in some way. I would hope that if they never get a ping back from me that they would conclude that my spam filter is swallowing it and take me off their list. I know, I know, but I can dream. --Barry On Mar 22, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google > homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I > could see no image! > > WTF? > > So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears: > https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif > > .. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and > possibly being white. > > This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com > site can collect statistics on the image being displayed. > > Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail > client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure > formatting stunt? > > BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included > the initial email. > > -- Owen > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
