Did They Read It? Part 2

Back on May 23rd, I wrote a short article on the controversy surrounding "Did They Read It", a program that adds a webbug to your email so you know that it was read, and how many times it was read.

At the time I predicted that Congress would soon have a law forbidding webbugs. Well, its not Congress, but according to this article at BroadbandReports.com the French have announced that under French law it is already illegal for a French citizen to use didtheyreadit.com.

I'd go see if DidTheyReadIt.com has a response, but Websense doesn't let me access that website. Websense as them in the spyware catagory.

I cant help but feel that people who get this sense of violation when the read about didtheyreadit are unaware of webbugs and how they are likely used in all the html newsletters and promotional material that you already get. This just makes the technology available to the average user.

If you want to remain in control of your email, you need to make sure you're reading in a "text only" mode. Or run a personal firewall that will disallow or prompt outbound http attempts from your mail client. I imagine that Outlook 2003's default of not loading images on mail from external people would help also.