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

[Tom Emerson]

On Friday 24 February 2006 6:57 pm, Emerson, Tom wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Behalf Of matti
> > http://www.didtheyreadit.com
> >
> > I am wondering how it works, ..
[...]
> they've HTML-ized it and added a "hidden" jpg as well as a related
> style-sheet
[...] 
> 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... ;)

Well, actually, it's hard to tell -- it seems that the default is to only 
notify you "once" that it has been read, you have to visit the website to see 
the full "log".  Of course, the "free" account only lets you track 10 
messages per month (not that I'm likely to ever want to track another, 
but...) I don't see much point in wasting a second message...

As for kmail, I pretty much knew that it wouldn't trip it "by default", 
however it *will* give you the opportunity to let it try -- I tried and got 
two warning messages from kmail itself, one telling me that html-based 
content is bad, and a second confirming an external image reference (hidden 
webbug) both required an action on my part (clicking a kmail-generated link) 
to get the content to render and the image to be downloaded.

Aha!  I now know how they can determine "how long" you have the message open: 
the 1x1 jpg appears to be of infinite length and transmits at a rate of 1 
byte/second, so I'd imagine the server simply keeps track of how long you 
attempted to download it...

(kind of sucks if you have a client that tries to fully retrieve all elements 
of a message before rendering...)