Is anyone else reading your email ?
Is your boss or even some coworker secretly reading your email ? Are the Federal agencies snooping your email messages ? Following are two simple techniques that can help you confirm your suspicion - it detects snoopers and can track the address of the computer that is watching your email.Remember that for steps 3 & 4, you can create a free account on geocities.com, create a dummy HTML file that contains Statcounter or Google Analytics tracking script.
1. Set up a Hotmail account in US and and a second email account with a non-U.S. provider. (eg. Rediff.com or IndiaTimes.com)
2. Send messages between the two email accounts which might be interesting to the email snooper or NSA who may be monitoring your email.
3. In each message, include a unique URL to a Web server (link to the dummy file on geocities.com containing the tracking code) that you have access to its server logs. This URL should only be known by you and not linked to from any other Web page. The text of the message should encourage an NSA monitor or email snooper to visit the URL.
4. If the server log file ever shows this URL being accessed, then you know that you are being snooped on. The IP address of the access can also provide clues about who is doing the snooping.
The other technique uses Google Analytics for tracking the email impressions.
1. Create an email email message such that Urchin with the following HTML code to embed the __utm.gif image anywhere in your email message.
<img src="http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?
utmt=imp&utmac=C&utmcsr=news1&utmcmd=email&utmctr=em&uctr=k">
The email impressions would be credited to the source "news1" and the medium "email". As soon as someone ones your email, the impression will be registered on Google Analytics server as the gif file is downloaded on the spying computer.
2. If the email recipient has disabled automatic downloading of internet images, you can create a campaign link to track the email referrals. Tag these links using the utm_ campaign variables.
Continuing with the example above of an email message which you track using the source "news1" and the medium "email," your tagged link might look like this:
< a href="www.mywebsite.com/?utm_source=news1&utm_medium=email" <click here</a>
Update: According to NYT, the volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the National Security Agency without court-approved warrants was much larger than the White House has acknowledged.
Americans come to the program's attention only if they have received a call or e-mail message from a person overseas who is already suspected to be a member of certain terrorist groups or linked somehow to a member of such groups. And the agency still gets a warrant to intercept their calls or e-mail messages to other people in the United States.
Source: How do I track email campaigns? | Who is snooping on my email? - confirm if one's email messages are being read by someone else.
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Reader Comments:
Excellent idea. It's very similar to "pixel tracking", where you reference a 1x1 blank image in the email.
When I read your e-mail, I don't click the href's or load the img tags.
But you're welcome to your false sense of security, it makes my job easier.
The Bush administration may have authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone calls without court orders.
The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
The NSA website created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035 — likely beyond the life of any computer in use today.
This issue raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States.
The White House Office of Management and Budget prohibits federal agencies from using persistent cookies ( those that aren't automatically deleted right away ) unless there is a "compelling need."
Yes, actually the Google Analytics trick uses the 1x1 pixel image.
This does sound worrying and would like to try out the above mentioned suggestion. Being non-techie, its hard to follow though. You could put other link if it is more simplified (read didactic directions)
Thanks
Thanks for your help to tracking my emails.
Amit, This is ridiculous man ! Someone who wants to get into all this , is obviously smarter than just allowing lame links to be tracked ?
This may seem silly, but you know, I would have never thought my boss could read my email. Why? I know better than do something like a confidential correspondence at work.
Does this NSA cookie go on computers of Visitors from overseas as well? I would stay well away from that site anywhere in the world....
yes. the cookie being set is probably done using a content management system of some type, and applies to all visitors to the site.
to combat this issue you can configure firefox to only allow a cookie to be set for the current browser session regardless of what the webserver configures. you can also manually edit and delete cookies using modern browsers.
last I heard, dubya bush removed the requirement that the intelligence agencies get a warrant via the FISA court with the explanation that getting a warrant is "too slow" to catch the sophisticated terrorists and extremists within the US.
there is obviously something tricky going on when the telecommunications companies involved with the NSA's project are being considered for immunity.
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