- Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam and Spam
- Call an Exterminator! It's a Web Bug!
- What Are the Implications?
- Protecting Yourself from HTML Snooping
- Mail Readers that Don't Display Exterior Graphics
- Web-based Email Clients that Are Safe
Mail Readers that Don't Display Exterior Graphics
Luckily, there are several email programs that interpret the innocuous parts of HTML (bold and italics, for example) without displaying Web Bugs and other exterior graphics:
Eudora 5.1 for Windows and Mac OS: http://www.eudora.com/.
Evolution for UNIX/Linux: http://www.ximian.com/.
Mail.app for MacOS X: http://www.apple.com/macosx/.
Entourage, part of Office 2001 for MacOS 9 or Office X for MacOS X: http://www.microsoft.com/macoffice/.
Generally, they have a toggle such as "display HTML that is included in message only," or "Disable the download of HTML images" so that the HTML formatting is kept, but linked bits are not. Most email clients today also strip Javascript from included HTML. Unfortunately, the user can often be easily convinced to open an attachment that is actually a program that installs a backdoor trojan or worm. Those types of attachments are best dealt with on the mail server.