BS: Did they read your email?

Subject: BS: Did they read your email?
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 May 04 - 01:14 AM

Do the implications of this, in these times, bother any one else?

Did they read it dot com.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 May 04 - 01:39 AM

Kat - It's not surprise that it can be done. The SPAMMERS have known about this for a long time, although it appears in actual use they seldom bother to track their stuff with covert receipts. If you don't click something, they've got too many other really stupid people to chase who do click.

My question is why anyone would want or need a receipt without letting the recipient know you've asked for it. Most email programs allow you to check a "receipt" box that will send an email back to you when the mail is opened - but it does tell the recipient that it's doing it.

If I send something to a friend, and feel the need for a receipt, friend is entitled to know I'm confirming the mail.

If I send something to a "less friendly" and want a receipt, it's usually to impress them that I'm keeping track - and for sure I want them to know it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 May 04 - 01:45 AM

Hmmm. I suppose there are legitimate uses, but I'm afraid it's too useful a tool for spammers.

When I read the thread title, I thought Kat meant other people who might read my e-mail, like managers. When I used to work for a living, my boss confronted me with a list of every e-mail I had sent that was critical of management, and he gave me a reprimand for misuse of e-mail. My boss was a friend, and I think he hated to do it - but the list was apparently compiled by upper management in the so-called employee-owned "privatized government agency" where I used to work.

That was scarey.

So I'm glad I don't have to work any more, and now I don't very much care who reads my e-mail.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 24 May 04 - 03:28 AM

I believe from what I have read and heard, that all E-mail is scanned for key words in the same way that telephone calls are monitored.
How truthful this is...only the people in the know would really know!!!! If key words set off some chain of events, where anyone who uses them draws attention to themselves, then it must be like a ticking TIME_BOMB!!!!!. We are all under suspicion....Big Brother is watching YOU!!! OHHHHHH and ME!! Be Blessed.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST,Dave C
Date: 24 May 04 - 06:06 AM

You tellin' me that if you say things like Bomb or guns or stuff like that that they know???? Better not say owt then.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 May 04 - 07:26 AM

I don't know how this one works but advice from some for a long while has been don't use the preview pane on Outlook Express as that can be used to execute code to allow a spammer to log you. As far as I understand it their interest is confirming a used address as they are worth more and that the process thier side would be automated. Of course if you clicked to open the message, any such code could also operate.

Re the use of reciepts (ones users are aware of): It's something I rarely use but have found occasion to do so. I also sometimes recieve an email sent asking for the comfirmation. I think the last one I had was a scan of some music that I had requested - seemed pretty reasonable to me that the sender should want me to acknowledge that the scan had been received.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 May 04 - 09:49 AM

The question about the gummint reading emails is silly. Could they? Yes. Are they? Gawd, no! At least, not everyone's.

Think on it for a moment. How many millions of emails go out in just California alone every day? In the US? In North America? Worldwide?

To check for keywords takes a fraction of a second. Multiply it by the keywords being searched for and the numbers of emails sent. Then toss out those messages in which the context precludes gummint interest, like, "I thought "Shrek 2" was a real bomb." Include misspellings: "Bumb" "gon". Then include deliberate dialectization or slang: "Waal, I done got myself a l'il ol' pissle ta use ta blow 'way tin cans."

Now include the emails that aren't sent over the Internet, but remain on internal servers, often behind firewalls.

We haven't even talked about coded messages: "Amos, the ship will arrive at 1700" could mean that the bomb will go off at 1900 or it could be just what it purports to mean.

And what of those (such as myself) who have several webmail and email accounts?

Pinpointed to an individual or output from a particular site, yes. Blanket filters of the Web and the Internet? Come on, it ain't worth it.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 May 04 - 11:40 AM

lots of 'fairly' easy ways to encode any emails you worry about...

I assume that anyone who needs security will find a way.... (one easy way is ROT-13 some mail programs support this, or you could do it thru a page like I note. It would prevent casual scanning.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 May 04 - 11:45 AM

I always go in first thing in a new program and set my email so that it doesn't acknowledge receipt OR reading of any email I receive. Just go into your preferences and you can set it. But by default they will respond if the emailer requests it.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:06 PM

Any system administrator can read your email. Send it over the Internet and it can be read at any server it passes through.

E.G.: Mail sent at point A, Alton, Illinois, and going to point M, Memphis, Tennessee. It passes through servers ("nodes") B, which is in Sidney, Nebraska; R, Chicago, Illinois; and L, Little Rock, Arkansas to get to Memphis. The packets can be read at any of the nodes (and that means the whole message if it's small enough for one packet and most are). No, I wouldn't drive that way to go from Alton to Memphis, but the computers choose the best and fastest way for them. Email traffic is usually backed up on the servers as well, so your message might still be there a week after you send it (it's overwritten when the tape is used again for backup).

Encrypt it, if you wish, but there has yet to be an unbreakable encryption. Believe this: if any government wants to break your encryption, it will.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Amos
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:11 PM

PGP encryption is quite sufficient for most uses. As for most emails being small enough for a single packet, I have to reserve judgement but it sounds a bit off to me. For pGP to be inadequate you would have to be purused by someone wiht a lot of time and money, such as the government.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Amos
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:22 PM

The determining factor of packet size is the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) which varies with the host or router settings. If a received datagram indicates the packet's size is too great for the MTU of the receiving router, the incoming packet is fragmented in retransmission, which means not all the data of that one packet will be in one packet thereafter (and therefore probably not available at any one network node). See notes below.

A

From the MS web site:

MTU is the Maximum Transmission Unit of a network. This is the greatest amount of data or "packet" size that can be transferred in one physical frame on a network. Fragmentation of packets occurs if a packet is sent across a network that has an MTU smaller than the packet's frame length. This leads to reduced performance levels as fragments need to be reassembled.

The Internet standard for MTU is 576 bytes. When you connect to an Internet resource, your data may have to go through a router that has an MTU of 576. This results in fragmentation if your MTU is greater than 576, which can result in a Web resource being loaded slowly.

Microsoft recommends using the default setting of Automatic for the Internet Protocol (IP) packet size.

---

Some arcane considerations from some website:

Example calculation of the segmentation performed by IP Routers
"Calculate the number of fragments which are sent when an IP datagram with payload of 3000 bytes is sent from a computer on a network A via two routers to a destination computer C. The MTU if network A is 4000 B. The MTU of network B is 508 B and for network C the MTU is 1500 B. Ensure that your answer specifies the number and size the of the IP datagrams sent on each of the LANs"

On First LAN

Total size of initial PDU = 3000 + 20 B (PCI) = 3020 B.

Network A: MTU 4000 B > 3020 B - therefore one packet is sent.

(packet sent with offset=0, more=FALSE)

On Second LAN

Network B: MTU 508 B < 3020 B - therefore fragmentation is required.

Fragment payload size = 508- 20 B = 488 B.

Total number of packets sent via network B = round(3000/488) = 7 packets.

First six packets of size 508 B, with 488B of payload

The last packet has 48 B of data, and therefore of size 20 B + 72 B=92 B.

(all packets except first sent with offset>0,)

(packets 1-6 have more=TRUE, last packet has more=FALSE)

On Final LAN

Fragments are not reassembled by an IS - i.e. at router C.

Router C therefore receives 7 packets, 6 of size 508 B, 1 of size 92 B.

Network C: MTU 1500 B > 508 B - No further fragmentation is therefore needed.

i.e. There are 7 packets as in network C, 6 of 508 B and one of 92 B.

Note

The IP network protocol requires all fragments except the last to contain an integral number of 8 B (64-bit) chunks of data. This requires the payload to be exactly divisible by 8 in all packets which have the "More" bit set.

---

Hope this helps.


A


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Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:37 PM

How strange. How smarmy. It reminds me of a weird TV show I saw late one night, where the TV dick trails a cheating spouse, then
sets up a confrontation, allowing the wronged party to catch cheating spouse in the act and create a really public scene, which TV dick is only too happy to televise.

I guess the point of "did they read it" is to catch people lying to you. I can see the appeal, I guess, but it doesn't seem like a happy way to live.

As far as the technology, well, Big Brother is already watching us...

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:39 PM

Ooops, lost my cookie - 12:37 guest was me. First time for everything.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 24 May 04 - 01:31 PM

Rapaire, keep in mind that Google can search nearly 4.3 billion webpages by keyword(s) in a tenth of a second. If Google can do it, governments can.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 24 May 04 - 01:32 PM

Oh, and Google does make some allowance for speling mistakes.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Chief Chaos
Date: 24 May 04 - 02:25 PM

I do use the receipt function at work.
Far too often some of the "kids" delete the e-mails and then complain that they didn't get told about this or that. Normally I'd rather do a face to face meetings with all of them but we'd be spending all day in meetings. Alos this way some of my personnel who would otherwise lie about not receiving or reading the e-mails have no leg to stand on. Its a shame but that's the way it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 May 04 - 03:42 PM

Take a look at what the "secret report" does, and try to guess how it works. (I don't know, so I can speculate to my own satisfaction.)

An email message includes an "opened/unopened" bit (or two) that tells whether the message has been opened. You can set most email readers to delay changing the bit for a selected time, which many people do just so they won't "mark" a mail a having been read while scanning the incoming.

If the program simply sent a confirmation email, in the manner of the built in "receipt" function, you'd hardly be able to call it "without the knowledge of the recipient" since most people would (eventually) notice mail being sent.

The program would seem to require an embedded "bot" to make a surreptitious connectiong to the web, to "sneak" the report back to you (via the program's own site, of course).

This is called spyware.

You - an ordinary user - have no way of knowing, except perhaps based on the reputation of the company who provides this "service" what other information the "bot" gathers and sends back to them.

So if you use this program, you are guilty of sending spyware to your recipient, and causing it to be installed and to operate on the recipient's machine, with no knowledge or control over what other uses the program's originator may have in mind.

Maybe.

A quick look at the other software advertised at this site does not give me a warm feeling about the morals/ethics/honesty of the builder. The other spyware advertised has its uses, perhaps, but trading on the paranoia of unsophisticated users to sell such stuff in a mass marketing format is at least mildly offensive to me.

I think I'll pass.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 May 04 - 07:56 PM

Tue, Peter, but those webpages Google searches are webpages Google has cached. That's why I use at least two different browsers for a serious websearch -- usually, but not always, Google, and a metasearch engine such as Metacrawler.

The importance of using cached for Google (and other search engines) is that they have already been indexed. Naturally, this speeds up your data retrieval enormously.

I'm not aware of ANY search engine that can search the ENTIRE World Wide Web in any acceptable response time without using previously cached and indexed pages -- "on the fly" so to speak.

Put another way, every web search engine is simply the catalog to a library of a huge number of indexed web pages. You'll get to the current edition of the "book" as long as the "book" is still there. If the "book" has been discarded by the "library" it might still be in the catalog, but if you want to read it you'll find it missing (get a 404 or 405 error, most likely).

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 May 04 - 10:39 PM

Along with blocking those outgoing messages once you receive a message or open it, you can ask your email to request a receipt when you send a message. Again, it's one of those preferences you set.

I tried the "send receipt" function a long time ago, and remember that I was quickly swamped with little messages saying such-and-such message had been received, and sometimes another saying that it had been opened. I remember there was a standard message from AOL that said something along the lines of "your message has been opened but this receipt gives no indication of whether the recipient read or understood the contents."

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 May 04 - 08:57 AM

You can get a tee shirt that says "I read you email" from Thinkgeek.com. They have lots of 07h3...sorry, slipping into geekdom there...other cool stuff, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST,a nonny mouse
Date: 25 May 04 - 09:36 PM

For obvious reasons, no name now.

What I have done in the past (quite often, actually) is to send email to friends that looked like it was in some sort of code, but include the name of a supervisor/owner/boss that I thought was really dumb, or did stupid things. It might look like this:

wundhyrek fuy rewqzoom tom jones hhlkitregda . . .

Then sit back and wait. Someday I'll write a book about the reactions!

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 26 May 04 - 11:28 AM

They can read my e-mail till the cows come home. They`ll soon get pissed off studying interminable spams concerning Viagra, dates with young girls, investment offers, cures for piles and everything else you can imagine.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 May 04 - 09:37 AM

And reading mine! Well, if you really are into how to make HIP tabs display in colors other than the defaults, or using CSS with XLS, or wonder why renewmon disappeared in Release 7.3.2, or whether Crystal Reports is superior to Reportsmith, or how to up the jdaemon* -- feel free.





*If you really feel the need to now, the command, at root, is "up jdaemon" without the quotation marks. For it to work you need a jdaemon.

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 04 - 05:35 PM

And I didn't think such people could read

Subject: RE: BS: Did they read your email?
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 May 04 - 09:02 AM

Librarians? Most of us can read. Prit near all, in fact, at least a little bit. I myself can usually make out words pretty good, even if I don't know what they mean. That's cause I know my letters real good!