There is a setting in Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox that will help reduce spam. To do this, open up the browser, then from the menu select Edit, then Preferences, then click on the arrow beside Privacy & Security. Next click on Images. Check the "Do not load remote images in Mail & Newsgroup messages" box, then click OK. I suspect IE 6 and other newer browsers have something similar.
This hint came from http://mozilla.gunnars.net/privacy_security2.html (hints on controlling cookies and popup windows among others are included). Part of the text on that page is: "The recommended "Do not load remote images in Mail & Newsgroup Messages" setting is: Check "Do not load remote images in Mail & Newsgroup Messages". This is a very important and useful option (if you use Mozilla's mail client), which is often overlooked. It could save you from a lot of Spam. Now you are probably wondering, what images have to do with Spam. Simple: Many Spammers will send you Spam in HTML format. In the message, they are fetching an image from a server, often an "invisible" (1x1 pixel) gif, which has an ID added to it. This means that if the image is fetched from the Spammer's server, the server log will contain the ID that was assigned to your email address, letting the Spammer know that your address is valid and that you opened the message. This will, in turn, lead to even more Spam. If you have ever wondered about weird messages that did not seem to contain anything, now you know their purpose - to see, if you exist. So, I strongly recommend that you check this option, diabling the loading of external images in mail and newsgroup messages. If you are wondering if this will also make Mozilla not show you the images your brother or sister sent of the last family reunion, there is no need to worry. This option will not block images that are contained with the email, only those that are fetched from an external server." --- Back to me Another cause of spam is not disguising e-mail addresses on web pages. We've been fighting a major spam problem at the library where I just started working. Three weeks ago I coded our e-mail addresses on our web pages in hex code (javascript would probably be better, but not all browsers support it) and our spam has dropped by almost 80% in the past 15 days, as most spiders look for the "mailto" and "@" and aren't smart enough to find the hex values instead. When the spiders find valid addresses, the data is returned to people who sell these addresses to spammers. If you are interested in hex codes or javascript solutions, e-mail me OFF list and I can send you links and parts of addresses already coded. This image process mentioned above is the next step I'll take to control spam. For those of you that have web pages with e-mail addresses on them, be aware that those addresses are collected when they are in the form of mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (that is m a i l t o : x y z @ a b c . c o m without the spaces)- to prevent this, you need to "hide" them. The intent of this post is not to start a browser war. But for those of us that use Mozilla, Navigator, or Firefox, this is a way to stay ahead of the spammers. The newer versions of IE should have something similar, but I haven't checked it out yet. Mark Plank co-moderator -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm The poll results are in....... To REPLY to the list, use REPLY ALL, to reply to the sender, use REPLY. I do NOT know if this works on all e-mail software, but it works on some of the most common ones. For those of you on DIGEST mode, all REPLY messages go to the list. Change your membership, change your message settings, use our CALENDAR, view shared files or photos, view the list archives, GO TO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
