use Perl

• I timed out (Score:2)

  by jmm (276)

  I tried, but after 30 seconds of looking at a blank white screen and "loading from didtheyreadit.com" (or whatever the name is), I (the human, not a program) timed out and hit the bak button. There's a limit to how much I'll do, even for science.
  • Re:I timed out (Score:2)

    by brian_d_foy (44)

    I discoverd the same thing. They are doing something tricky: they just keep sending data. They keep sending data to you do something else. This way they know for how long you read the message, which is about the same time their program ran.
    
    So, this is even more diabolical than I thought! They are also sucking bandwidth. Imagine a company deciding to use this (the intended market, I'm thinking), and that another company gets a lot of email from them. That is almost a denial-of-service attack! Lots o
    • Re:I timed out (Score:1)

      by phillup (4419)

      I loaded the URL with wget.
      
      It is coming across at 1 B/s.
      
      [waiting...]
      
      Turned out to be 302 bytes large.
      • Re:I timed out (Score:2)

        by brian_d_foy (44)

        302 bytes, eh?
        
        That would be about 5 minutes at 1 B/s, and they claim to measure times much longer than that. How long did it actually take? Did it get slower the longer it went on?
        • Re:I timed out (Score:1)

          by phillup (4419)

          It was almost exactly 1 B/s the entire time.
          
          I'd almost bet that they eventually count bytes transferred as the method of doing the timing.
          
          We may actually be seeing wget, or some other part of the stack, giving up on the connection... the fact that it was almost exactly 5 minutes is suspect to me.
• Anyone think I'll hear from the lawyers? (Score:2)

  by brian_d_foy (44)

  Now the referer on all of those clicks is http://use.perl.org/~brian_d_foy/journal/19205
• spammers do this (Score:2)

  by KM (4)

  Some companies who provide "ad campaign" services do this. Helps them track who reads what, and what email addresses are valid, and get rough geographical info on the reader/address. I once was speaking with a guy who owns an "ad campaign" service and he said they find that some people will bounce SPAM, but still read the email. Then, they know that even though a bounce came back, someone read the mail and the email is considered valid.
  
  "Phone Home" for email. I dunno, not sure I would trust a service from
• Here's what the report looks like: (Score:2)

  by brian_d_foy (44)

  http://www.panix.com/~comdog/didtheyreadit.html [panix.com]
  
  The only thing i have changed is the email address at the top, where I inserted "CENSORED".
• I'm amazed that it works (Score:2)

  by drhyde (1683)

  That anyone today still loads random images embedded in an HTML email baffles me.
  • Re:I'm amazed that it works (Score:2)

    by htoug (771)

    If you are forced to use MS Outlook, eg at work, then you have no choice. It will load the damn things no matter how hard you try to get it not to.

    /me still trying to tunnel mails out of exchange without OutLook.