Stupid ebay/amazon question

John Abreau jabr at blu.org
Thu Jun 29 10:32:00 EDT 2006


Steven W. Orr wrote:

> 
> Ok. I take it back. I thought this was a good explanation but I realize 
> it's not. Let's try again:
> 
> I go to ebay and I log in. Now ebay knows who I am. Then I browse around 
> and look at a bunch of different items. In no case am I providing anyone 
> with my email address. Then, after a finish with ebay, for a few weeks, 
> the number of ebay spam messages goes up. Yes, I did not discriminate with 
> the cookies; I let them all be set. Is that enough for them to know how to 
> get my address?
> 

A lot of auction pages include images. If a page can use images hosted
on a seller's server, and the img tag can be coded to include
information such as your ebay login name, then maybe a spammer could
find a way to use that for harvesting addresses. The same logic
could certainly apply to cookies.

I don't know how plausible it is.

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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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