Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Public Service Announcement

I know very little about internet security, but I thought this was worth sharing.
When checking my stats for this site, I often follow the incoming link referrals back to see where they came from. Today, one was from an email sent on a university webmail service using an "ISC Networking and Telecommunications Webmail Server." Clicking on that link not only allowed me to view the original email message-- from the message page, I was able to click the link to the sender's inbox and read other messages.
If the person who emailed the link to my "Mice" post is reading this, don't worry, I did not read all your email-- I just tested this on the ones with the subject lines "Poopsy-woopsy honey-bunch, you left your lunch on the kitchen counter this morning" and "Reminder to self: social security number, bank account details, etc."
But I found it really alarming that website owners might be able to read the email of anyone that happens to send a link to their site! So for what it is worth, I just thought I would caution everyone about using certain webmail programs and emailing links unless you're 100% sure that your system is truly secure.

1 comment:

Madame X said...

Blogger doesn't offer tracking, but you can get a free counter by using Sitemeter or Statcounter.com