Web bugs hit prime-time...

I knew someone would make money off of web bugs sooner or later... before this, the most mischevious use for web bugs I had seen was by the Dean campaign... I couldn't get anyone to care about them then; maybe this will change things (three comments of mine on that issue: 1, 2, 3.).

E-mail tracker firm sparks fears over internet security

The days of pretending you just didn't get that e-mail you ignored could be over. Today, a company called DidTheyReadIt.com offers customers the chance to track every e-mail they send.

By signing up, you'll be able to see when an e-mail was opened, how long it was looked at, if it was read more than once, and if it was forwarded to anyone else.

Hint: don't allow external images to be loaded when you open email. GMail does this by default (although realize what could happen if you allow external images to be displayed!). If you use a text-based email reader like pine or mutt, this won't be a problem. Does anyone have suggestions for Eduora, Outlook and Maill.app users?

UPDATE [2004-05-23 20:12:07]: Dan Gilmor posts on this, and I get the fabled first comment post with this:

The method that they use is to plant "web bugs"... merely 1 pixel by 1 pixel images with unique file names. When you open up one of their messages in an email viewer that renders HTML email messages, the reader will go fetch the tiny image. Then, the server that the image resides on knows if you've ever retreived this image.

Naturally, the answer to this is to use an email client that does not display external images. If you use a text-based email reader (pine, mutt, etc.) or even Google's GMail, external images are not displayed by default. Any other email client (Eudora, Mail.app, Outlook) should have a means of turning off the ability to display external images.

The result: people "tracking" you will see that you never "open" any of their messages ever (even though you can at your leisure). I'm sure there's also a way to just download all the external content necessary to your home machine before it's read... then people "tracking" you will see that you open all their mail, and spend exactly one millisecond reading it (for example).