RE: How do web beacons work?

["Bill Ward" <Bill.Ward () ealaddin com>]

I web beacon is a simple way of a tracker being placed in a URL.

For example
www.example.com/image.gif?43234h2
As we all know the ? divides the Server reference, form the server data
so effectively your say get image www.example.com/image.gif and pass
along this piece of data 43234h2

This is a common technique used by spammers is to create an HTML
formatted email that includes a cookie. 

When the message is loaded in the viewing page or opened, then the
images are downloaded.  This allows the spammer to receive a
confirmation (a Web Beacon) from the recipient upon viewing the Spam
message.

By keeping a database the spammer knows that 43234h2 = you () example com.
The spammer now knows that this email address is valid and can continue
to send more Spam.


Respectfully,
William D. Ward
Western Region Sales Engineer
eSafe division or Aladdin Knowledge Systems


---Original Message-----
 From: Thorsten Holz [mailto:thorsten.holz () mmweg rwth-aachen de]
 Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 9:04 AM
 To: honeypots () securityfocus com
 Subject: Re: How do web beacons work?
 
 Lance Spitzner wrote:
  Okay, what exactly is a web beacon?  Its sounds kinda like a
honeytoken,
  but I've never heard of the term before.  Now that I did a google,
looks
  like quite a few are using them to track users.  What exactly is a
'web
  beacon' and how does it technically work?