Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Improving Your E-mail Life
E-mail has been called the “killer app” of the Internet, and it certainly deserves that title. Yes, chat and instant
messaging are popular. Social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn get lots of press, and microb-
logging sites, like Tumblr, appeal to a certain type of person. Not everyone uses these services, but it's safe to
say that almost everyone uses e-mail. In fact, if you're like the majority of the world, you probably use e-mail
all day long. This means that learning a few efficient e-mail techniques can make your day a bit easier and save
you time for more important pursuits.
Configuring Mail to not show images in messages
Lots of messages nowadays come not just as plain text but with fonts, colors, images, and other flourishes. This
fancy formatting, called either rich text or HTML, makes for a more pleasant e-mail experience, particularly for
images. Who doesn't like a bit of eye candy to brighten the day? Unfortunately, however, not all images are be-
nign. A
web bug
is an image that resides on a remote server and is added to an HTML-formatted e-mail mes-
sage by referencing an address on the remote server. Images and other objects that reside on a remote server and
are not embedded in the message are called
external content.
When you open the message, Mail uses the ad-
dress to download the image for display within the message.
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is the method that folks use to put together most web pages. It
was so named because it is similar in spirit to how an editor would “mark up” a manuscript or show the printer how
it is to be published.
That sounds harmless enough, but if the message is junk e-mail, the image address likely also contains either
your e-mail address or a code that points to your e-mail address. So when the remote server gets a request for
the URL, it knows not only that you've opened the message but also that your e-mail address is legitimate. Not
surprisingly, spammers use web bugs all the time because, for them, valid e-mail addresses are a form of gold.
Unfortunately, the Mail application isn't entirely hip to the web bug menace. On the positive side, if it detects
that a message is spam, it blocks remote images from that message, as shown in Figure 6.1. If the message is ac-
tually legitimate, you can click Load Images to see whatever pictures the message has to offer.
