Spammers know when you're reading, and when you're not.

Often junk mail senders will insert code in the email they send you that will pull an image from their web site and 'notify' them that you opened that email message. It could be just a small clear dot that isnt visable to the recipent. Once the email client contacts the senders website to get that image, the address is then verified as a good address. Then be assured it will be saved in their bulk email database, and possibly shared with other parties.

How do you avoid this?

First, make sure you have an email client that can turn 'off' HTML, and read all email as text only. With this feature there is no way for the spammer to verify that the address is valid, and it will help prevent your address from being used again or distributed.

Note, once you do this, you will not be able to see all the glamorous graphics that you may be become accustommed to in some email messages. But they shouldnt be necessary anyway, that's what the web is for.

Yahoo has an option for turning HTML off.
AOL does not offer that option at present.
For ISP email, the program Mailwasher will 'block' HTML tags from being read.

See related articles for additional information on preventing SPAM.

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