[RndTbl] Web Bugs

[Scott Balneaves]

On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Glen Ditchfield wrote:

> On June 1, 2002 11:00 am, ed orphan wrote:
> > I've been reading an alarming article in 2600
> > "How to Regain Privacy on the Net"
> > which mentions web bugs... Is there any software
> > I can use in Linux to
> > keep these web bugs off my computer
> 
> KMail from KDE 3.0 (and possibly earlier versions) has a web bug blocker.  See 
> Settings > Configure KMail..., Security settings, General tab.  "Allow mails 
> to load external references from the net" is disabled by default.  The pop-up 
> help for that control gives a little information about web bugs.

Essentially, for those who don't have kmail loaded, it's reading an HTML
formatted mail (always a bad idea :-) ) and the HTML e-mail loads external 
images not attached to the e-mail.  Obviously, by tracking access to that
image, they can tell who's read the e-mail and from where.

KMail can handle it, and oddly, so can my mail reader of choice, Pine :-)

Scott

-- 
Scott L. Balneaves      | "If people are good only because they 
Unix Administrator      |  fear punishment, and hope for reward,
Legal Aid Manitoba      |  then we are a sorry lot indeed."
sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca |       -- Albert Einstein