Politech: FC: Neulevel's PostMinder tracks email without recipient approval

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[How rude and annoying. From now on, I'm only going to use /usr/bin/Mail or 
maybe tail -100 from the mail spool... --Declan]
---

Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 15:03:11 +0200
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: [deleted --DBM]
Subject: Neulevel's PostMinder tracks e-mails without recipient approval

[If you use this, please omit my name! Thx.]

Neulevel's PostMinder tool (http://www.postminder.biz) sends out confirmations
to the sender that the recipient has read an e-mail even when the recipient
has disabled Return Receipts.

If your mail reader displays HTML, it will send a message back to Neulevel
to indicate that your message has been read. In addition, it displays a 
message
"The sender of this message requests confirmation when you read it. Click here
to confirm." No need to click -- it has already been confirmed.

If you dislike this, you can set your mail reader to Text-only/no HTML 
allowed.
Eudora users can disable "Use Microsoft's viewer" (Tools/Options/Viewing 
Mails).
PostMinder uses similar technology to track MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and 
other
documents supporting OLE. They claim that it will "allow you to find out if 
they
were forwarded to others or viewed by a third party", e.g. if someone leaked
a document to a journalist.

This is how PostMinder-modified mails look like --
NNNNNNNNNNN is a tracking number, > and < replaced by ] and [

[x-html]
[HTML][DIV][/DIV][DIV]This is the text of the tracked email
[/DIV][DIV][br][br][br][center][a 
href="http://www.NNNNNNNNNNN.PostMinder.biz/confirm.asp?NNNNNNNNNNN"][IMG 
SRC="http://www.NNNNNNNNNNN.PostMinder.biz/nocache.pl/NNNNNNNNNNN/footer20.gif"; 
border=0 height=40 width=400 alt=""][/A]
[iframe width=1 height=1 
src="http://www.NNNNNNNNNNN.PostMinder.biz/iframe.asp?NNNNNNNNNNN=2"; 
frameborder=0 STYLE="width: 0; height: 0px; border:0px"][/iframe][table 
height=1 width=1 border=0][tr][td 
background="gopher://gopher.NNNNNNNNNNN.PostMinder.biz/gb.NNNNNNNNNNN.gif"][/td][/tr][/table][/center]
[/HTML]

[/x-html]

---

Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 15:10:25 +0200
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: [deleted --DBM]
Subject: Fwd: Neulevel's PostMinder tracks e-mails without recipient
  approval

[If you use this, please omit my name! Thx.]

BTW, the tracking report send to the sender using PostMinder
includes date, time, user machine (IP-based), reader language
and email reader/browser.




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