A "phone home" is when something in the e-mail sends information back to a designated computer. It may be validating your IP address or e-mail address, or it may be calling the home computer to send some graphics. For example, there are e-mails from businesses that have no attachments, and yet they have lots of graphics in them. How do they get there? What is happening is that when the e-mail is opened, the e-mail "phones home" asking for the graphics, and the graphics are sent to your computer to show all of the necessary displays. Woody ============================= [email protected] writes: What is a "phone home"? -----Original Message----- From: Woody Woodworth <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 5:09 pm Subject: Re: [AOL-RW] Using my e-mail address The spoofing was experimenatal and restricted to a few times years ago to someone I knew well (my brothers), and only for something both harmless and rediculous but slightly plausible. By the way, there is a free trial program that permits one to track receipt of e-mails, how many times and when an e-mail is opened, the general location of the recipient, and more. Further, one can pull a "Mission Impossible" feat of deleting a sent e-mail so many seconds after the recipient opens the e-mail. (How many remember the original "Mission Impossible" TV show?) I pulled that trick on my brothers but forgot and left the "self delete" feature "On" when sent to someone else. Fortunately, they thought their "disappearing e-mail" was funny. Further, forwards can be loaded with "phone homes" and sly tricks. I peeked underneath one forward with unusually beautiful pictures, and the HTML was loaded with "phone homes" to a foreign country. I cleaned out all of the suspicious HTML and started fresh before I forwarded the pictures on. Woody -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 3:12 pm Subject: Re: [AOL-RW] Using my e-mail address It is--but it is also illegal and while they don't seem to catch those who are out to harm us--they may well catch you. <g> I'd not do it were I you. Joan ============= [email protected] writes: So it's pretty easy to spoof e-mail addresses. **************Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000017 )