> Someone on the list advised that one should not open spam messages while
> connected to the 'net because they send a message back confirming the
> validity of your address - then adding you to a spam list. So I did
> exactly that - and guess what? It does stop the confirmation and I
> suggest people disconnect before opening any messages !!!! Strange there
> is no warning by the email program (Eudora) that the message has initiated
> a return message !!!!
It hasn't initiated a return message. In the process of downloading the
HTML message content, it has retrieved an invisible graphic called a web
bug. There are any number of ways that these can be used.
For example, if I were a spammer, I'd have my spam contain a image called
user@domain.com.gif, where user@domain.com is that actual address the spam
was sent to. On the web server, I'd have the server automatically serve the
1x1 clear image. But my server logs will show which e-mail addresses were
in the requests, and I'll quickly know that those are valid e-mail
addresses.
Here's some more info on web bugs:
http://www.informit.com/isapi/product_id~%7B55056B59-FABE-4D6A-B4FA-91BD0672
7F9D%7D/content/index.asp
Junkbusters is also a good resource:
http://www.junkbusters.com/
Now, while you may no longer be registering as an active address to some
spammers, those that use spambots to harvest e-mail addresses from web sites
will still be grabbing your address. For example, the team.net archives
include your address in any messages you sent to the list. Some archive
systems automatically change e-mail addresses to user@xxxxx. Others engage
in mailfuscation, which is the process of replacing all the characters in
the e-mail addresses with unicode characters. A brower will render them
properly, but most spambots are apparently not smart enough to do so.
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