Netscape undocumented email address grabber

["Chris Hansen @ Work" <chris@kiva.com>]

Heads up, fellow adders, dwarfians, lovehounds and friends!

This is NOT on-topic for those on mailing lists, but is of importance to all -
Maybe.

I just read an article in InfoWorld dated March 4, 1996 by Brian Livingston.  
The gist of the article applies to all using Netscape Navigator and other 
browsers with the built-in functionality.

When a web page with a certain command (if you want exact syntax, E-mail me) is 
loaded, the browser automatically sends an E-mail to the person who created the 
WebPage IF the browser's E-mail functionality is active and accurate.  In other 
words, if you use Netscape to send or receive E-mail and you load one of these 
Web pages, you are automatically sending an E-mail to the vendor with your 
E-mail address.

To avoid distributing your E-mail address to potentially less than scrupulous 
vendors, remove the E-mail functionality from Netscape and use a different 
E-mail program, such as Eudora or Pegasus.  The other alternative is to use a 
browser without the E-mail functionality such as MS Internet Explorer 2.0 which 
doesn't have E-mail functionality yet.  Either that or enter a bogus E-mail 
address into Netscape and use a correct one in a signature file.  People can't 
automatically respond to your E-mail but, if they read, they could get a 
message to you.

If anybody is frequenting questionable content sites or doing it at work
without permission, you might want to be, um, discreet about it.  'Ware the
white wolf...

chris
the rather-annoyed-and-trying-not-to-be-mad one
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Contact Chris Hansen at:            chansen@kiva.com
                                    tchansen@xmission.com
KIVA                                http://www.xmission.com/~tchansen/
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