Read notify and other email tracking

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 19 Feb 2012 Posts: 13

Hi,

I've been reading this great forum for a few months now (great job everyone's doing here btw). I've just started annoying my first loan scammer Twisted Evil

I just have a couple of question about IP tracking. My ip location shows as being very close to my home (like within 3 miles Shocked

). I know this is just co-incidence as I happen to be quite near to one of my ISPs hubs, but it still make me a little uncomfortable.

I'm using gmail through their webmail interface as I understand this does not append my internet IP to outgoing headers?

My main question was about email tracking services like read notify. They generally exploit bugs in email clients to provide their tracking information. Does anyone know if these services could silently provide a scammer with my IP through gmail's webmail interface?

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3876

They don't exploit a bug, they simply place an image file in the mail, that has to be reloaded from a server. as nobody else has access to this file (usually a transparent 1x1 gif) the only one accessing it is the receiver.

Some services allow to chose or upload the image file, for example you can use a complete WU-Receipt as tracking image and write into the mail, that he has to load it from a server.

Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 2:45 pm

you can turn off the "auto show images" section of gmail and then you dont have to worry about it

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 19 Feb 2012 Posts: 13

I think they do exploit a few bugs in some clients to get around privacy settings (I think there's a hack used involving a hidden iframe and one using css background images). I guess all these holes are fixed nowadays though.

I've found the option anyway in gmail and disabled it.

Thanks Smile

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