[RndTbl] Web Bugs
Scott Balneaves
sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca
Sat Jun 1 16:31:41 CDT 2002
On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Glen Ditchfield wrote:
> On June 1, 2002 11:00 am, ed orphan wrote:
> > I've been reading an alarming article in 2600
> > "How to Regain Privacy on the Net"
> > which mentions web bugs... Is there any software
> > I can use in Linux to
> > keep these web bugs off my computer
>
> KMail from KDE 3.0 (and possibly earlier versions) has a web bug blocker. See
> Settings > Configure KMail..., Security settings, General tab. "Allow mails
> to load external references from the net" is disabled by default. The pop-up
> help for that control gives a little information about web bugs.
Essentially, for those who don't have kmail loaded, it's reading an HTML
formatted mail (always a bad idea :-) ) and the HTML e-mail loads external
images not attached to the e-mail. Obviously, by tracking access to that
image, they can tell who's read the e-mail and from where.
KMail can handle it, and oddly, so can my mail reader of choice, Pine :-)
Scott
--
Scott L. Balneaves | "If people are good only because they
Unix Administrator | fear punishment, and hope for reward,
Legal Aid Manitoba | then we are a sorry lot indeed."
sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca | -- Albert Einstein
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