Untitled topic • Hacker News Board

#1

Post by mcorrientes » Mon, Aug 29, 2011, 11:46 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

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#2

Post by alrs » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:14 AM UTC

This would be fun if we weren't building their dataset for them.

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#3

Post by ericfrenkiel » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:15 AM UTC

upvoted! In 2009 a friend and I released InboxAlarm - www.inboxalarm.com - to do the same thing.

You'd have the option to warn your friends via a Facebook Status Update to ignore any emails/links they received from you until you verified the intrusion.

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#4

Post by mtogo » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:28 AM UTC

Yeah, unless the person doesn't enable images in their email.

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#5

Post by ataggart » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:30 AM UTC

Well, that's a novel way of harvesting associated email address, names, and phone numbers.

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#6

Post by lazyjeff » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:35 AM UTC

mtogo wrote: post #4

Yeah, unless the person doesn't enable images in their email.

I wonder how many people view images in email by default. In gmail, they block images unless you click something to enable them; my Outlook at work also blocks images by default. And these are two very popular email clients.

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#7

Post by zhemao » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:37 AM UTC

Oh, the old external image exploit, eh? Seems like a great way to annoy your friends. Most email clients block external images by default for this very reason. Also, the image url is broken, so the message doesn't actually show up.

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#8

Post by Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:39 AM UTC

1. how does this work? obviously the external image trick.

2. can i use it outside US? Japan?

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#9

Post by zhemao » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:39 AM UTC

And now I realize I've just knowingly spammed myself and given you my email address and phone number just to satisfy my curiosity. Very well played, sir.

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#10

Post by georgemcbay » Tue, Aug 30, 2011, 12:46 AM UTC

"I know when and where you open my emails"

Actually you don't because neither my gmail nor my Android mail clients will load images automatically and the emails sent are super suspicious looking, so I'd never enable it for them.

Also since you don't verify my SMS in any way, I might be using your service to send untraceable text spams to someone (perhaps someone I don't like who pays 10 cents per text) by sending gotcha mails to an inbox I control and then opening the mails.

Also, on the "Trap" page, I would highly recommend you remove the "Chase" and "PayPal" templates. Using those on your site and in the "trap" mails you send is possibly wire fraud and would certainly not be appreciated by either party, regardless of intent of this service.