Don’t Automatically download HTML Graphics
Eudora Tip #168/26-Feb-2003

Last week I mentioned that some messages use HTML coding and link to pictures on a server. The sender hopes with this to communicate with you in a more eye-catching way than by plain text alone.

This can be perfectly innocent. If we look at such a message from Apple we can see coding like this:

img src=”http://www.mac.com/email/Production/images_shared/logo.gif”

This causes a logo to be displayed. The last few letters tell us it’s a logo; the first part after http:// shows the folder on the server where this picture is stored.

Fetching an image from a server though allows the unscrupulous to confirm that a particular email address is valid and that the email has been opened. This information can be used to send further messages (such as spam and viruses). This technique is known as a “web bug”.

Here’s an example

img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=”http://www.example.com.asp?&email=miraz%40firstbite.co.nz”

This tiny image is too small to see: it’s 1 pixel square, but the address it’s being fetched from includes my address, so the sender can check their logs and see that the email to my address was opened. You can read more detail about this at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

[http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html]

Now, I hate the spam and junk mail I already get. I certainly don’t want more. I also don’t want to open messages and see porn.

To preserve a little more privacy and reduce the risk of seeing undesirable images: go to the Special menu and choose Settings. Scroll to Fonts and Display. Uncheck the item: Automatically download HTML Graphics. Then when you receive a message which contains images stored on a server there will be a “broken image” icon at the top of the message. If you do want to see the images just click that icon while connected to your ISP and the images will appear. If you don’t want to see the images do nothing.