Handing Email Privacy to Spammers, Stalkers, Terrorists, and the Really Weird by Jan Ireland

Handing Email Privacy to Spammers, Stalkers,

Terrorists, and the Really Weird

By Jan Ireland

May 24, 2004

We've all used the "I never got your email" excuse, or the "I don't reveal where I live" security dodge. To avoid hurt feelings, we've trashed unwanted emails, thinking the sender would never find out.

But now, the time that an email was opened and how long it stayed open will no longer be a secret. The sanctity of your email box, if indeed there ever was any sanctity, is gone. Even where you are when you open that email will no longer be a secret from someone who wants to find out - simply by typing in your address and sending you a common email.

You won't know that they've done that, and they won't have to pay for it. Websites like www.didtheyreadit.com and www.msgtag.com will do it for free. What a present for spammers, stalkers, terrorists, and the really weird.

As with most new innovations, both good and bad uses can be made of the product.

Business implications are easily envisioned. What company wouldn't benefit from such precise communications detail?

And there are definitely human interest applications.

The front page of www.msgtag.com has a touching story of grandparents overseas being notified by email that their first grandchild has arrived. Of course a picture of the new infant is included. But so is a little "bug" attached to the email, that will let the sender (in this case the trustworthy grandson) know that his grandparents did indeed receive and open that precious email. "She immediately attracted international attention" engenders warm feelings in the new grandchild story.

But what if the same tagline were applied to other situations? Who wants the international "your urgent financial help needed" scam to be given any further impetus? Emotions about spammers are said to run the gamut, but I must confess that I personally have never been able to find anyone who even barely tolerates spam. Spammers, however, couldn't care less about personal preferences since they can send millions of spam emails, quickly and cheaply.

And whether they're liked or not they persist. Like 527s slicing through so-called Campaign Finance Reform laws, spammers know how to get around the recently passed anti-spamming law. It likely won't be long before the safeguards supposedly in this new technology are bypassed also. I haven't come across any source that suggests those safeguards will hold.

But there are far more serious implications for this new technology.

Think of stalkers and terrorists, and even the really weird.

University students are notorious for compromising security about their email accounts. The recently murdered Nicholas Berg is thought by some to have shared his email account information with a terrorist, simply by chatting with what seemed a friendly new acquaintance on a bus. How many of us consistently shield information when using a public computer, a computer at work, or while talking on a cell phone?

The computer-savvy among us have always been able to harvest IP addresses from emails that come to us, and then to use certain computer tools to find information about the sender. But the downside of marketing this new no-effort tracking to one and all is that spammers, stalkers, terrorists, and the really weird - have been waiting for it.