> Is that because the average user has not bothered to think out the > implications of allowing people who send you e-mail to track your > movements? Or because they simply don't care?
Both, I expect. Do keep in mind that not every IMG url in an HTML message is a web bug. It's only a web bug if the url is unique to the recipient. I just got an HTML message from Orbitz, for example, that contains a couple of dozen references to a 1x1 gif on their web site, but when I look at the HTML, I can see that there's no per recipient info, they're being resized and used as spacers, so in their web logs they'll just see a couple of hits on that file without being able to tell what message linked to it. If you grant that formatted mail is permissable at all (personally, I'd have rather gotten that message in plain text), I don't see how references to generic images make it any worse. On the third hand, I've heard of one moderately legit use for web bugs: people sign up for a list, you send them multipart/alternative with a web bug, and if there's a hit on the web bug you know they have a mail program that renders HTML so you can stop sending them the non-HTML version. Regards, John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
