From: "David Dyer-Bennet" : Telling your email client not to fetch pictures by default defeats them, : though. A very good idea in email, spammers use it to know a person : received the email. true.. : And you *can* tell most decent browsers not to load images by default, : too; trouble is that makes 99.99% of the web worthless, so it may not be : a useful option. (In Firefox it's tools/options/content/load images : automatically). true also :) my comment about OS's was that the OS still reveals the information IF a page is called in it's entirety - there's no automatic protection simply by having a 'safe' OS I have OB1 as a browser set for suspect pages, loading only the single page with no links, no media content, no images. however, simply calling the page still reveals the users PC to the world - but the web bug's main use is that it's usually called from another, less trustworthy location. So for example if I have an ebay auction up and I've loaded a web bug into the html for a bit of profit from some organisation who seeks information about users computer habits, calling the page reveals the computer to ebay - calling the web bug reveals your info to the person outside ebay. not good. Web bugs however are pretty much a part of life these days :/ Since we're onto security again, who here was/still is affected by the Sony rootkit virus? k
