I guess the next thing to figure out is how to block this thing. HuffPost Live

How is that different from the return receipt function that was in most local based email programs of yore?

you could usually opt out of sending return receipts, at least.

nickolamartynov: As I recall, back then you had to agree to allow a return receipt. Streak bypasses confirmation by embedding an invisible element into the email that can be monitored remotely.

Don't read email in a browser?

This discussion offers some insight and a couple of suggestions. Adblock Plus • View topic - How to block Streak, stealth Chr...

My email client won't load images unless I tell it to. I'm willing to bet this works with images.

Or just read your email as plaintext, the way email was meant to be

The agreement thing came later, and then they disappeared all together. And now it's back.

dkronfeld: Streak uses an "invisible div element" so I'm not sure if that would be blocked or not.

I always read my Eudora email in preview mode and it never sent a read notice to the sender

Yeah, I have to check to see if that's an issue for me if reading it as HTML

Okay, yeah, that's an image element. Which Gmail now displays by default. You could avoid that if you could turn off image display in Gmail.

Blocking the monitoring host would be trickier across multiple devices.

Probably using a "hidden pixel" type of thing. I tend not to use web based gmail and use a client instead. From there, I can control if it downloads pictures.

Dschink: Send me all of your usernames and passwords for all the services you use.

Thanks

Yeah, some things are public (IP addresses (yes, I know that many are NATed, IPv6 will likely put an end to that)). This is creepy because it reports on your behaviour covertly.

It's as if someone devised a way for your answering machine to report back when you've listened to a message.

You can't NAT with IPv6?

You can, but why would you??

Dschink: I guess the main things that bother me about Streak are that anyone can use it (no hacking skills required) and that it's available from the Google Chrome extensions page (quasi-sanctioned).

The simplest way to avoid this issue might be to just go into Gmail Settings and change the Images option back to "Ask before displaying external images", which was the default until recently.

Gmail - Choose Whether To Show Images Choose whether to show images - Gmail Help

dkronfeld: why would you not? There may be something I don't understand about why you wouldn't still want your systems behind a firewall with masked addresses.

DirkMcKeenan: NAT is a hack to get around the small IPv4 address space problem. It has the side effect of obscuring endpoint IP addresses, but that's a bad thing rather than a good thing.

We do horrid things in order to get around the fact that NAT breaks end to end connectivity.

This link actually explains it nicely: I Hate NAT! Or Do I...?

There's nothing about NAT as a "security" mechanism that cannot be accomplished via a firewall that simply blocks unwanted traffic.

ok, so it is just a security by obscurity method, not real security... right?

One thing I'll not take his word on is the idea that we won't run out of IP addresses soon (depending on your definition of "soon")

I can imagine the development of microbots if not nanobots which connect to each other via wireless networking. Most likely, they will use the prevailing method: IPv6 (unless it is replaced soon with IPv

erf. IPv8

We already have arduinos shields with ethernet included on the main board.

(drop "shields" from that last sentence. It's on the actual processor board)

Once we get to the nanobot stage, and I still hold onto the expectation that we'll have nanobot networks in our bodies as a chosen augmentation in our lifetimes...

I think that IPv6 gives us enough address space to assign an address to every atom in the observable universe.