Spam: Tricks to extract information

In a violently commercial world, information is one of the most prices commodities. And of that information, personal information may be the most invaluable, because it enables sellers to target you, analyze your habits, and, generally exploit you. e-Mail addresses are the first step in the process of contacting you... mainly because it's the cheapest way available today. Nigerian spams would never have the success they have if the spammers had to call by telephone.

Here are a few of the tricks I detected in e-mails received, just to show you how (un)safe you are.

The remote image trick: Images in e-mail are nice, but you should always suspect them, particularly if opening the e-mail causes activity on the internet link (though by then it can be too late).

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