Post by thread:[OT] Going mad - email dials automatically [OT]

So many clever people here someone MUST know :-) Using Internet Exploder 4 On received email from one source only, as soon as the email is highlighted in preview window it insists on autodialling ever link in the document - there are typically about 20 of these! I have tried to turn off this feature but it still seems to do it (but ONLY for this one source). Any idea of how to stop this? Russell McMahon _____________________________ >From other worlds - http://www.easttimor.com http://www.sudan.com What can one man* do? Help the hungry at no cost to yourself! at http://www.thehungersite.com/ (* - or woman, child or internet enabled intelligent entity :-))

Very simple my friend... Start/Settings/Control Panel/Internet Options Then go to the "Connections" tab and make sure "Never dial a connection" is ticked. That should do it. Regards, Tim Hamel In a message dated 2/12/00 12:05:26 AM Pacific Standard Time, spam_OUTapptechTakeThisOuTCLEAR.NET.NZ writes: {Quote hidden}> So many clever people here someone MUST know :-) > > Using Internet Exploder 4 > On received email from one source only, as soon as the email is highlighted > in preview window it insists on autodialling ever link in the document - > there are typically about 20 of these! I have tried to turn off this > feature but it still seems to do it (but ONLY for this one source). > > Any idea of how to stop this? >

As I'm learning, one of the spammers favorite tricks is to include in an HTML email a ftp or http link to a logo. The logo is just a plain white box, so it doesn't appear and they include an ALT tag so that the little "I haven't had a chance to load this image" icon doesn't appear. The image name is and id number tied to your email address. When their special server gets a request for that image, they know two things 1) you read (or at least previewed) the email and 2) your email address is valid. MS Outhouse (which is usually the mail client associated with EI) also has a feature where the sender of the email can request notification when you read the email. I don't have details on how that works or how it can be defeated. Except of course for the solution to all problems.... switch to Linux. Then you can rewrite the email client to blow up the SPAMmer or slap your friend around when he request deliver notification or just to wait until your back on line before sending it. Now if I could just get Red Hat to write a partition table during install... must not be smart enough to leave M$ and enter the swell "real men" Linux club. <GRIN> BTY Thank you for marking this [OT], there seems to be a rash of off topics that haven't been lately. James Newton, PICList Admin #3 .....jamesnewtonKILLspam@spam@piclist.com 1-619-652-0593 phone http://www.piclist.com {Original Message removed}

piclist.com wrote: > As I'm learning, one of the spammers favorite tricks is to include in > an HTML email a ftp or http link to a logo. The logo is just a plain > white box, so it doesn't appear and they include an ALT tag so that > the little "I haven't had a chance to load this image" icon doesn't > appear. The image name is and id number tied to your email address. > When their special server gets a request for that image, they know two > things 1) you read (or at least previewed) the email and 2) your email > address is valid. Switch off automatic image loading. I have learned this trick to greatly speed up *serious* web browsing. -- Cheers, Paul B.

if you'd take time to investigate your "fact" you'd see that there is an option to disable that Tools/Options/Email Options/Tracking Options > Blame? I was stating fact. Point is, you or I are not going to reverse > engineer and change Outhouse so that it doesn't do that anymore. On the > other hand, I'm sure there is an open source email client and email server > (more likely for Linux than M$) and with that we have a hope of > removing the > "feature" and preserving our privacy. > I don't know what experiences you have had with SPAM, but what I've been > through makes my blood boil. I've had to change email account several times due to spam, so yes, i've suffered under it as well. I might also add that this was not from my use of any email package at the time, its from leaving your email address on a web page where a robot can easily find it. What i've done now with some reasonable success is not to have my email address displayed on any web pages. This brings me to another point. The web archives of the piclist all have our emial addresses displayed. Can we not blank those out or at least add a bit into it that would make it invalid for an automatic scanning program? Regards John

Thanks for the information. My Microsoft Outlook 98 (8.5.5603.0) does not (in "fact" <GRIN>) have a Tracking Options tab under Email Options. I have taken the time <GRIN> to completely investigated the program menus and the msn site including the knowledge base and do not see a solution for this version of the program. Its is supplied by my employer and he does not wish to update it at this time. The update would not be free as we do use several features of the program which are not available in the freely distributed version. Some email addresses are also posted at the piclist.com site. I originally added email addresses only for people who placed them in their signature line, on the theory that they wanted maximum exposure on the internet. After seeing what was being done with these, I'm replacing "@" with " at " as I go. You would need to contact the people who run the PICList archive (we don't) to ask that they not include your email address on the archive page. The iversoft archive does not list posters email addresses but does leave signature lines containing email addresses intact. I personally would rather have an archive (freely provided thanks to infosite and iversoft) with emails and SPAM than no archive (with out emails) but if they can find the time to obfuscate the addresses I guess that would be great. --- James Newton (PICList Admin #3) jamesnewtonKILLspampiclist.com 1-619-652-0593 PIC/PICList FAQ: http://www.piclist.com or .org {Original Message removed}