Until recently, I got no more than 1 piece of spam each week. How times change.
After recently skimming a couple of e-mails sent by Nigerian hustlers–but not responding–my inbox is being peppered with 10-15 bogus solicitations each week.
Is there anyway for spammer to tell that I’ve actually opened and read their messages? (I never open attachments, FWIW.)
Cue “Don Your Tin-Foil Hat” theme song? 
Note: It helps a lot when asking computer questions to list the OS and software you are using!
There are basically two methods that can be used:
Email can be sent with confirmation of receipt. When you open the email, the sender gets a notification message. This can be disabled (and should be disabled) at your end.
Embedded image links in an html formatted message. You should always have “display images” or whatever your email program calls it off. Myself, I always read email in plain text. Always. (So sending email as html is stupid.)
Some versions of MS email programs and such are also vulnerable to this problem with links in the subject line, so even viewing the message is not required.
Check for the latest version and bug fixes of your email program.
Yes, they can, if your client is set to display HTML content; the spammer can reference a uniquely-named, often non-existent resource in his domain (usually an image); when your machine attempts to render the HTML, it will ask his web server to serve up the uniquely-named resource and it can be logged that the email he sent you has been opened.
This is very important. If an email has an image in it, when you view the image, the view gets logged on whatever server hosts the image. Not only do they know that you have opened the email, they know your IP address, and a bunch of other information about you.
I always send email in html. That’s the only way to get stationery. If you think I’m being stupid, perhaps that’s why I, and your friends who like don’t send you emails. I bet it also took you three versions of Windows before you upgraded from Dos. Some people just have to do everything the old way and never see the need for change.
Personally I’m never bothered with spam. I have two addresses, one is private and the public one can get all the spam, I don’t care, because I only check it when I’m expecting something specific.
And by accessing my email on-line I never have to care about those download problems. If you’re paranoid about infiltration, don’t use Outlook.
As for them getting your ip number when a picture is viewed, so what? I view many thousands of pictures all day from sites I’ve never heard of. Have you never gotten a popup of some shady site selling porn or gambling trash? Well, they now have your IP number. Wooooo! Spooky :o
Stationary is very annoying you should stop sending emails with it.
mint my own:
It’s certainly the reason people like me won’t ever get your emails. Any email with html coding in it that isn’t from a known source (i.e., affirmatively filtered IN) goes straight into the trash, unread.
What email program are you using? Eudora has no difficulty creating stationery without using HTML.
What does that mean?
The difference is that if you view an image in an HTML e-mail, they now know that this e-mail address is active, and they have an IP address associated with it. That tells them which part of the country you live, which Internet access provider you use, etc.
I send all my e-mail in plain text, and prefer reading plain text e-mails. Sometimes, someone will send an HTML-only message, and I can’t see it in Mozilla Thunderbird unless I select “view as simple HTML”. I keep up-tp-date with all of my hardware and software, but for e-mail, it’s the message that matters, not the pretty font it’s displayed in.
There’s Eudora-style stationery that is basically just canned text, and then there’s the foo-foo stuff with pnk parchment backgrounds, teddy bear borders, large Comic Sans type and lots of smileys. That stuff goes in the trash; it’s too obnoxious, and nine times out of ten it’s glurge.
Note: If there is an image inside the email (like an MIME encoded attachment) then it is no problem. It is only if there is a link to another site that has the image that is the issue.
Knowing your IP address does a generic spammer no good. (It is useful for finding machines owned by gullible people that can be coverted into zombies though.)
mint my own: I have a PhD in Computer Science with over 20 years experience as a College Professor. I have published over 40 papers and my research appears in standard textbooks in Computer Science. I am not in any way shape or form backwards. Quite the opposite. Perhaps you should learn to take advice from experts rather than criticize them.
And, by the way: Every Disk-based Operating Systems is a “DOS”. Including the one you are using now!
What’s more, if you do this from your place of employment and you have a static IP address, a spammer can easily find out where you work. Same goes for a an account at a school, an internet cafe, etc. But spammers aren’t the worst of your worries; there are scarier creatures than them out there. Including the damned federal government.
Good points.
Here are some articles written for the email spammers about the information they gather from email campaigns, btw:
http://www.grokdotcom.com/emailmarketingmetrics.htm
http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/opt/article.php/2223991
Which branches of the Federal Government do you suspect of monitoring your on-line messages? 
Sam, have you not followed the debate on Carnivore, the FBI’s email tapping program. The FBI is monitoring email in the US.
You can find tons of info about this from non tinfoil hat wearing sources.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38618,00.html
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,65443,00.asp
Monitoring is one thing. Actually being read by a human is another. I doubt the Bureau has the manpower to read even .0001 percent of the intercepted e-mail. So unless you’re an obvious bad guy, it’s unlikely your privacy is being compromised in a meaningful way.
I think…
I have two questions:
What is stationary (or stationery, most likely)?
Second I read my email remotely on a Linux machine using Pine. This means I discard html files unread and the only time I download atachments is when the accompanying letter explains what it is (usually a paper to prepare for an electronic journal that I am technical editor for, or else photos from my children). I will repeat the OP. Can anyone tell if I have opened an email?
It is a graphic background for e-mail, formatted as a background image in HTML. Here is an example:
Almost certainly not. http://ask-leo.com/can_i_tell_if_email_i_sent_has_been_read_by_the_recipient.html
Only in the same sense as the fact that Macintoshes are PCs (since PC is short for Personal Computer). Just as PC has evolved from a general term for a home computer (since the term was in use before IBM got into the act) into a specific kind of computer, DOS has evolved from a general term into a more specific one. (and since you seem to like to show off your qualifications, I got my Master’s in Computing Science in 1976 - so there).
Guh, turn that crap OFF. The only thing I hate more than annoying background images adding unnecessary bulk to the size of an email is animated annoying background images adding unnecessary bulk to the size of an email. Save the pretty pictures for your desktop.