E-mail client

[Christopher Jahn]

On 06 May 2004, ben wrote


Ah; thanks -- I'd *love* to locate a "this has been read"
facility in an e-mail client, and wondered if Pegasus had
found the trick...

The best you can hope for is "rerturn receipt", and it is
dependent on the wishes of the recipient. Privacy is a must
in an email client if people are to trust thta it is secure.

--
Christopher Jahn
:-(

http://home.comcast.net/~xjahn/Main.html

The more people I meet, the more I love my battleaxe.

 

[Aaron]

In (e-mail address removed), this is what badgolferman had to say
:

<SNIP!>

|| But Pegasus does it automatically i.e. the receiver is not aware
|| that opening the e-mail is transmitted back to the sender.
||
|| Ben
|
| How is this possible?

Maybe it uses a web bug - a tiny invisible graphic hosted on a server.
The receiver doesn't know that a small graphic embedded in the email
has been downloaded and the time and date of the download from the
recipient's PC is notified to the Sender.

Nonsense, Pegasus is immune to web-bugs as it uses it's own html viewer.





Aaron (my email is not munged!)

 

[Tim Weaver]

Nonsense, Pegasus is immune to web-bugs as it uses it's own html
viewer.

What has that got to do with being immune to web-bugs? Unless it has
the ability to disable the bug, it retreives it and your hit gets
counted.

 

[Sparx]

In [email protected], this is what Aaron had to say :

| Nonsense, Pegasus is immune to web-bugs as it uses it's own html viewer.

So if I send a Pegasus user an HTML email with a link to an image ( embedded
in the message) hosted on my web server, will Pegasus retrieve the image
from the server and display it? If it does then it certainly isn't immune to
web bugs. Pegasus users, please respond as I don't know much about Pegasus'
features.

I don't think that the ability to use its own html rendering engine would
have any effect... what is required is that the engine doesn't retrieve any
externally hosted images and only displays images that have been sent with
the email. I believe Win XP SP2 will add this feature to OE in the near
future. Yahoo! Mail (webmail) has recently started this feature too.


--
Regards,

Sparky

Ah'm Leghorn of Borg. Prepare, ah say, prepare to be assimilated, son.

 

[Aaron]

What has that got to do with being immune to web-bugs? Unless it has
the ability to disable the bug, it retreives it and your hit gets
counted.

Yes that what it does. If a email client has it's own html render
(Pegasus is not the only one),it's the very first thing built in.





Aaron (my email is not munged!)

 

[Aaron]

In [email protected], this is what Aaron had to
say :

| Nonsense, Pegasus is immune to web-bugs as it uses it's own html
| viewer.

So if I send a Pegasus user an HTML email with a link to an image (
embedded in the message) hosted on my web server, will Pegasus
retrieve the image from the server and display it?

No of course not. That's one of the perks of using it's own inbuilt html
viewer. It is not designed to do this.


If it does then it

certainly isn't immune to web bugs. Pegasus users, please respond as I
don't know much about Pegasus' features.

But I do.

I don't think that the ability to use its own html rendering engine
would have any effect... what is required is that the engine doesn't
retrieve any externally hosted images and only displays images that
have been sent with the email.

Yes, I thought this would be obvious.

The idea of having it's own html rendering engine rather than depending on
IE to display html, is that not only is the html engine incapable of
downloading remotely linked objects, but it's will never run javascript,
activex, or be vulnerable to any IE exploits since it's literally doesn't
know how to.

Blocking web-bugs is just one of the advantages.

I believe Win XP SP2 will add this feature to OE in the near
future. Yahoo! Mail (webmail) has recently started this feature too.

It's already in Outlook, not sure about OE.

In any case, even such a procedure is less secure than the way pegasus mail
does things, since you are still reliance on IE which is subject to various
exploits.




Aaron (my email is not munged!)

 

[Tim Weaver]

Yes that what it does. If a email client has it's own html render
(Pegasus is not the only one),it's the very first thing built in.

Well, that's a good deal, then. I've just started using Foxmail and I
don't know *that* much about it. It has an option to embed IE as the
HTML renderer. I have this turned off and wonder if it will kill
bugs. Functionality seems decent, but the help file sucks.

 

[Aaron]

Well, that's a good deal, then. I've just started using Foxmail and I
don't know *that* much about it. It has an option to embed IE as the
HTML renderer. I have this turned off and wonder if it will kill
bugs. Functionality seems decent, but the help file sucks.

I've always found Foxmail a bit dodgy, but for security&privacy, Pegasus
is hard to beat, though I understand some people find the layout a bit
confusing. On a sidenote, 4.2 public beta is available.


Aaron (my email is not munged!)