[Coco] OT: Self-modifying email??!!

[Aaron Wolfe]

That might work, although you can't count on html messages being
reloaded every time the mail client opens them, or even being
displayed at all.  Different mail clients have widely varying
behavior.

A common nefarious use for that type of trick is to embed a tiny 1
pixel wide image in your "email marketing campaign" with an
autogenerated URL that identifies the address that particular tiny
image was mailed to.  Now the advertising company knows exactly who
opened the message just by looking in their web server log.  If you
forward it, they can track who you know and who they know and so on.

On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 1:05 AM, Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu> wrote:
> Thanks, Aaron.  That certainly seems like the most logical
> explanation.  I hadn't realized that images displayed in an email
> message need not reside in the message itself.
>
> This gives me an idea for a great email application for those who
> occasionally experience Sender's Remorse.  Or those with less
> honorable intentions.
>
> The application takes the message you've typed in and turns it into an
> image.  The email is then sent out as a link to an image in a web
> location controlled by the sender.  To the recipient, the image
> appears as ordinary text.
>
> If the sender later wants to change or delete what he's sent, he just
> changes the content of the image that the sent email points to.
>
> Recipient:  "But you said...."
>
> Sender:  "No, I didn't!  Just look again at the message I sent you!"
>
> (...I could have SWORN he said he's only charging me THIS amount!)
>
> Sort of like the revising of history envisioned by George Orwell in '1984'!
>
> Art
>
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 11:38 PM, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:
>> An HTML email message can use image tags that display images from any web
>> server anywhere.  The message content on residing in your inbox is not
>> being changed, instead the image that the message points to is being
>> changed.
>> On Oct 11, 2013 11:31 PM, "Arthur Flexser" <flexser at fiu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm hoping somebody on the list can figure out what is going on here.
>>>
>>> A few days ago I received a coupon from Chevy's restaurants, a welcome
>>> for joining their email discount club.  The coupon was in the body of
>>> the email itself, and did not require clicking on a link;   you just
>>> had to print out the email.
>>>
>>> I opened it a few times in the next few days, but did not get around
>>> to attempting to print it until about 10 days after first receiving
>>> it.  When I opened the message on that occasion, it appeared different
>>> in an important respect:  The coupon was overlaid with an exclamation
>>> point surrounded by a triangular border, beneath which was the
>>> following text:  "Sorry.  This offer has been viewed too many times".
>>>
>>> Aside from the question of why the restaurant would choose to cause
>>> such an overlay message (the coupon still had weeks left until it was
>>> due to expire), I'm puzzled by HOW they were able to accomplish the
>>> trick while the message was sitting passively in my Inbox folder.
>>>
>>> To make things more puzzling, the overlay disappeared a couple of days
>>> later, after I complained to Chevy's and they replaced the coupon with
>>> an additional similar email.  It disappeared not only on my copy of
>>> the original mailing, but also on another copy of that original that I
>>> had forwarded to someone.  That person saw the same thing I did:  the
>>> overlay was visible when he first looked at my forwarded message, but
>>> was no longer visible when he looked for it later after I asked if he
>>> could still see it.
>>>
>>> If anyone would like to have a look at this unusual message and
>>> perhaps poke into its html code to see how this trick was
>>> accomplished, please let me know and I'll forward you a copy.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't have thought it possible for the sender of a message to
>>> affect its content after it had been received by the recipient.  It
>>> seems rather invasive, somewhat like the sender of a postal letter
>>> stealing it back from my mailbox temporarily in order to modify its
>>> content.
>>>
>>> Art
>>>
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>>>
>>
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