[SGVLUG] Hmm.. "didtheyreadit.com" wondering how it works

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of matti
> 
> Anyone seen this before?
> 
> http://www.didtheyreadit.com
> 
> I am wondering how it works, ..
> 

Not much of a mystery -- since I don't care if my "work" e-mail gets on spam lists (hey, it's not like it's a private account...) I signed up for the "freebie" and sent a 1-line plain text message to myself


here is what I see on the POP server:
+OK 2007 octets
Received: from ylpvm16.prodigy.net by vml with SMTP; Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:32:58 -0500
X-Originating-IP: [69.90.153.6]
Received: from xpost2.xpostmail.com (xpost2.xpostmail.com [69.90.153.6])
        by ylpvm16.prodigy.net (8.12.10 083104/8.12.10) with ESMTP id k1P2VKuY025293
        for <osnut at pacbell.net>; Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:31:20 -0500
Received: from xpost2.xpostmail.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
        by xpost2.xpostmail.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k1P2X5an030079
        for <osnut at pacbell.net>; Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:33:06 -0500
Received: (from root at localhost)
        by xpost2.xpostmail.com (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) id k1P2X5Bw030077
        for osnut at pacbell.net; Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:33:05 -0500
X-mimeole: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6603.0
Mime-version: 1.0
Subject: tracking test 2
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:32:53 -0800
Message-id: <BE1FF88182EE7A4CB0B75B40945A219A10AE8A at wbwburpexmb2.amer.warnerbros.com>
X-ms-has-attach:
X-ms-tnef-correlator:
Thread-topic: tracking test 2
Thread-index: AcY5s8dm67PZvP7GSdij6oe3SL9sYA==
From: "Emerson, Tom" <Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com>
To: <osnut at pacbell.net>
X-originalarrivaltime: 25 Feb 2006 02:32:54.0691 (UTC) FILETIME=[C82C3F30:01C639B3]
X-mime-autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by xpost2.xpostmail.com id k1P2X4an030070
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="=_1bfe09fe637fa57aef821cff976fb8b9"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--=_1bfe09fe637fa57aef821cff976fb8b9
Content-Type: text/plain;
        charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

plain text -- track that!


--=_1bfe09fe637fa57aef821cff976fb8b9
Content-Type: text/html;
        charset="iso-8859-1"

plain text -- track that!<br />
<br />
<div><img src="http://xpostmail.com/d4e8c0c3eec3300ca7d6d0a5461ac8abworker.jpg" nosend="1" name="dtri" width="1" height="1"><link href="http://xpostmail.com/d4e8c0c3eec3300ca7d6d0a5461ac8ab.css" hreflang="dtri" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></div>
--=_1bfe09fe637fa57aef821cff976fb8b9--
.
==============

so, they've HTML-ized it and added a "hidden" jpg (web-bug, just as you surmised) as well as a related style-sheet (note the "name" is essentially identical to the jpg)  Attempting to download the .css page generated a report that I had "opened" the message.  A few minutes later, a slightly-more-detailed message arrived

=======>>> aside <<<========
the "expect" script I built the other day is working great!  I have about 500 messages queued up, and it seems about every 50 or so is one of these bogus messages with an embedded double-quote character that trips things up
============================

Ahhh... it has finally/actually been delivered to my home server where I can "look at it" in thunderbird (I suppose I could look at it in kmail as well...) so let's see if thunderbird trips the wire...

....hmmmm....  not getting any bites -- I guess I have the right settings set in t-bird to not respond to HTML threats... ;)