On 18 Aug 2001 06:17:25 -0400, Alex Prestin wrote: > I'm not sure this is the proper forum for "conspiracy-theory" bugs It's not conspiracy, merely exploitation of badly designed MUAs. Consider for a moment whether the "spammer" is really the faulty party here - they're merely taking advantage of your HTML mail client. Besides, everyone knows HTML mail is evil anyway :) > <img > src="http://www.megahardcoresex.com/sites/XXXXXXXX0 (continued) > 3b/sf03b08152001.gif?M=XXXXXXXXX&ID=wakkoat_private" width="1" height="1"> > > See it? A web bug. If I opened this mail in an HTML-capable browser, > that little image would've popped up and I would've been none the > wiser. That's not true. Had you opened that mail with a dumb HTML-capable mail client then you would probably have just verified your address with the spammer. However there are clients which will not display images unless you issue an instruction for that to occur (I'm playing with evolution, it is one such client however there are others) and then there are non-HTML clients which don't have this problem at all. In short, there are plenty of alternatives around so if you don't like this behaviour, change your mail client or look for image settings you can alter. > So, anyone have any idea of how to deal with this latest little spammer > toy? I've seen these appearing for a while now but I mostly ignore them on the grounds that I don't load their little "web bugs" (can someone please invent a better term?) and they can readily obtain a valid address for me anyway. --jcm
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Aug 19 2001 - 16:58:40 PDT