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ET Phone Home?

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Owen Densmore

ET Phone Home?

Administrator

Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I could see no image!

WTF?

So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears:

https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif

.. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and possibly being white.

This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com site can collect statistics on the image being displayed.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure formatting stunt?

BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included the initial email.

-- Owen

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Robert J. Cordingley

Re: ET Phone Home?

eMail Services like Constant Contact use this kind of technique to track email openings.
Robert C

On 3/22/13 10:22 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I could see no image!

WTF?

So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears:
https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif

.. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and possibly being white.

This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com site can collect statistics on the image being displayed.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure formatting stunt?

BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included the initial email.

-- Owen
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Gillian Densmore

Re: ET Phone Home?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Shouldn't be there for formating reasons CSS javascript and PHP should handle placement of elements on a page just fine without the need of a 1px big item.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I could see no image!

WTF?

So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears:
https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif

.. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and possibly being white.

This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com site can collect statistics on the image being displayed.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure formatting stunt?

BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included the initial email.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Barry MacKichan

Re: ET Phone Home?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Most mail clients make displaying remote images in HTML optional. I never display images automatically; if I trust the sender, I can click "Show images" button that mail.app puts up.

These invisible images mean that the sender's server server gets hit every time one of their emails gets opened (unless you've set the option correctly). You can bet that the two 40-character 'folder names' encode your email address in some way.

I would hope that if they never get a ping back from me that they would conclude that my spam filter is swallowing it and take me off their list. I know, I know, but I can dream.

--Barry

On Mar 22, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I could see no image!

WTF?

So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears:
https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif

.. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and possibly being white.

This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com site can collect statistics on the image being displayed.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure formatting stunt?

BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included the initial email.

-- Owen
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Owen Densmore

Re: ET Phone Home?

Administrator

Our concern here is that one of our members may have had his mail client hacked or his mail path may be compromised.

Naturally its best .. although annoying .. to turn off images. We would not have found this otherwise.

I'll be contacting folks who appear to have this problem.

-- Owen

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Barry MacKichan <[hidden email]> wrote:

Most mail clients make displaying remote images in HTML optional. I never display images automatically; if I trust the sender, I can click "Show images" button that mail.app puts up.

These invisible images mean that the sender's server server gets hit every time one of their emails gets opened (unless you've set the option correctly). You can bet that the two 40-character 'folder names' encode your email address in some way.

I would hope that if they never get a ping back from me that they would conclude that my spam filter is swallowing it and take me off their list. I know, I know, but I can dream.

--Barry

On Mar 22, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I could see no image!

WTF?

So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears:
https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif

.. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and possibly being white.

This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com site can collect statistics on the image being displayed.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure formatting stunt?

BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included the initial email.

-- Owen
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Ron Newman

Re: ET Phone Home?

In reply to this post by Gillian Densmore

Not always. You can use a 1px image, re-sized on the client using CSS to any arbitrary size, as the basis for an image map so that various areas and polygon-sized regions on the page become clickable. Far more efficient than transmitting a full size image over the wire.

--
Ron Newman, Founder
MyIdeatree.com
The World Happiness Meter

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Shouldn't be there for formating reasons CSS javascript and PHP should handle placement of elements on a page just fine without the need of a 1px big item.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yesterday, I noticed in the middle of the "You just went to the Google homepage" conversation, my GMail "accept this image" banner was on, but I could see no image!

WTF?

So I look at the raw source, and indeed, this appears:
https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1=482/5bb54418d45ddd9646340c46dfba6e56/spacer.gif

.. which when downloaded was a single pixel, invisible due to alpha=0 and possibly being white.

This seems to be a way of knowing when the mail was opened, the yesware.com site can collect statistics on the image being displayed.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Or have you caught a malware in your mail client that is looking at your usage? Or is it simply part of an obscure formatting stunt?

BTW: This then appeared in all the rest of the conversation which included the initial email.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com