[ale] Spam and HTML email

[Jason Day]

On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 10:51:48AM -0500, Geoffrey wrote:
> You can certainly validate an email address by embedding a link to a 
> unique image in a message if the mail tool displays images.  Simply 
> create a 1x1 pixel white image and name it to be unique, as:
> 
> esotericAT3times25.net.png
> 
> And then send it to me.  If my browers opens the image, there'll be a 
> record of such in the web server that's serving the image.

Oh, it's much worse than that.  You could put something like this in an
email:

<img
src="http://3times25.net/cgi-bin/webbug?email=esoteric%403times25.net&UNIQUE_ID=blahblah&timestamp=2004.01.05.13.20.00"
width="1" height="1">

See the webbug faq here:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9