spamming

HI there,

I recently noticed that some spam messages have links in them which
link to images not directly, but via a php script or some such.

This means if you are on-line at the time that it arrives,
and you click on its title to see what it is in the
preview pane of your e-mail client, then the spammer is able
to tell from that that you have received the e-mail.

The images can even be invisible - maybe white one pixel images
in an html e-mail.

One solution is to never highlight an e-mail when on-line except
from someone you know about already - and go off-line to look at any
others.

To test this out try this web page which sends you an html e-mail
and then after you look at it in your e-mail client, sends you a
second e-mail to let you know the exact time you read it:

http://mackraz.com/trickybit/readreceipt/

It's effective too - I've been careful not to preview any unknown
messges on-line for a week or two and the level of spam I get has
dropped right down.

Cheers,

Robert