Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashDrive
I have a question .... How do they know that I have opened it and read it ... if I have not replied to there stupid attempts to scam me....I've read it and then deleted it.
BTW ...The email didn't request a receipt to inform the sender that it has been received and opened.
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Do you use HTML in e-mail? If so, it's easy to tell if an e-mail is opened using an image for which a URL is embedded in the e-mail causing the image to be downloaded from the internet at the point when the e-mail is viewed. The URL for the image will uniquely identify the recipient - the destination IP address is also captured when it's downloaded. These images can be as small as 1-pixel and may be invisible.
To protect yourself, turn off automatic content download in e-mails or use text-only e-mail. Your e-mails will look weird, but they'll be safe.
Web bugs (as these images are sometimes known) are also used in web browser tracking (along with many other techniques such as browser fingerprinting).