Security threats Toolkit

Story: Porn spammers sneak images into Outlook

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You really need to get your facts right. All HTML capable email clients have the ability to display embedded images in HTML. Embedded images have been around for many years now, and are part of the IETF email standards. So you need to credit the IETF with the “invention” – not the spammers.

Embedded images are inherently safe as they do not require external internet connections in order to render properly. Images that are linked from an email to an external Web site are referred to as “Web Bugs” or “Web Beacons” – and these mechanisms pose both privacy and discovery threats.

I suggest that you retract this silly assertion before Microsoft descends to apply a harsh slap. Their software is doing the right thing (in this case) – and has not been breached as you say.

Most technology journalists seem to think that all legitimate email is generated as plain text, and that HTML emails are generated by spammers. This is simply not true – most person to person email is delivered in HTML format these days, and these legitimate communications often contain branding and other embedded content.

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