Re: Emacs/Mutt and Efail or OpenPGP is safer than S/MIME?

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> Does that create a vulnerability in some cases?  Can newsgroup
> postings use an image to determine who reads them?

Yes and no.

If you consider emails, the possibility of tracking there is pernicious
because the person who sent the email knows that they sent that email to
you, and when they get a pingback when you read that email, they'll know
with pretty high probability that you've read that email.  Which is why
loading external resources when reading email is bad (even if many email
readers default to this behaviour).

When you're reading a newsgroup, you're reading a public resource.
Anybody can read it, so the only thing the person who controls the
external resources can determine is that somebody (at a certain IP
address) read the message.  It's the same situation as if you read a web
page -- somebody'll know you did it, but not who you are (beyond the IP
address).

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no