[Hidden-tech] Drum Roll Please.... As another spammer walks to thefinancial guillotine

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:57:02 -0400 Scott Reed <sreed at avacoda.com> wrote:

> 
>    ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>    ** If you did, we all thank you.
> 
> 
> Some spam is just sent to see if the email address is valid. An HTML 
> image (could be just one white pixel) is included in the body of the 
> message and when your email client opens the message, it loads the image 
> from the spammer's server and your email address gets flagged as worthy 
> of lots more spam. You can avoid this by configuring your email client 
> not to display images without your confirmation and your subsequent 
> diligence in confirming display of images only from non-spammers.

Even better: don't use an E-Mail client that displays HTML at all (or
completely disable the display of HTML E-Mail). There is no *valid*
reason for HTML E-Mail, and there never was.  Really.  99.9% of E-Mail
is nowhere 'formal' enough to need or deserve 'formatting', other than
the sort of formatting available with the space bar and/or the
return/enter key.  Do you dig out your fancy acid-free paper and your
calligraphy pens to scribble a note?  No, you just grab an envelope and
scribble on the back -- most E-Mail is really just the electronic
version of this. There are way too many ways to get 'screwed' by HTML
E-Mail -- not only images via cgi ('web bugs'), but all sorts of fun
with <embed> tags and JavaScript.  It also eats bandwidth big time -- a
100 character plain text E-Mail message can end up as 1k bytes once all
of the HTML tags, style options, etc. are added in.

> 
> ussailis at shaysnet.com [10/10/2008 9:44 PM] wrote:
> >    
> > Here's the part that I don't get...
> >
> > I get a lot of spam that doesn't have an identifiable product, for example
> > a "little blue pill," has no address to get this product because the return
> > email line is a "no reply," and no other info, other than "male
> > enhancement."
> >
> > Nor does this spam have any attachments.
> >
> > Now I can figure out what it is about, but what is the point? To sell
> > something a communication method is required.
> >
> > What is the point of the spam? Why did someone go to the trouble of writing
> > and sending it?
> >
> > Jim U.
> > jim at nationalwireless.com
> >   
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