[P1] anti-spam note

[Jack Rodgers]

On Jan 1, 2004, at 12:08 AM, Don Hinkle wrote:

> How did it do this? Does that mean that when the email is opened, that 
> it somehow dispatches a notice back to the original sender?

The first try may have been the web bug, a small one pixel invisible 
image that must be called from a server like any photo or graphic. When 
it is, it leaves behind the address of where it is going.

Microsoft made a programming language available to the entire world 
that does things inside Outlook, etc. Emails can carry programmed 
instructions of things to do. This is why virus and trojans and other 
nasties run rampant in the windows world.

The same problem exists in UNIX and OS X but may be under better 
control and have fewer people trying to exploit it, or maybe the 
problem just has not been discovered or revealed to us Mac OS X users.

Turning off HTML rendering in your email program is a start for 
protecting yourself but not a perfect answer.


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Since most spam is being sent by Microsoft OS computers, the answer to 
stopping SPAM seems obvious...  Jack Rodgers