> Davies, Elizabeth H. hunted and pecked out this message on 4/18/2002 1:55
> PM 
> 
> >Even if an email appears to be text, it could be RTF or HTML. Unless you 
> >have your mailreader set to accept text-only and NOT enriched text, any 
> >email you open or even preview (if in Outlook or similar reader) can tag 
> >you. It's as simple as placing one line of code way down the bottom of the 
> >email, usually following a series of about 15 break tags (so those with 
> >true text readers don't see it unless they scroll way off the viewable 
> >area). It would pull up an img tag (for a transparent pixel) whose URL is 
> >a parameter of a script. (example: <img 
> >src="http://someIPaddress/trackthis.cgi?img=XXX.gif&email=XXX&client=XXX&e
> >mailsent=XXX">... or it could just be an encoded string <img 
> >src="ASDZXV123SFASF2342342LJSD7987")

Doesn't work with Pegasus Mail for Windows. Even 
when Pegasus renders RTF mail, it will not fetch images 
from outside sites. And Pegasus doesn't run scripts, 
either.

IIRC, there are Javascript ways to query a browser for 
whatever e-mail address has been set in its preferences, 
if the user has done that. I know I've visited sites in the 
past, never clicked on anything on them, and awhile 
later got an email from the site ... 

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
 

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