Now how, exactly, does this help me?

[generator12]

I'm wondering if anyone one on this blog can explain to me the value of the following statement:

"To help protect your privacy, some content in this message has been blocked."

Just how, exactly, does blocking part of the content of a message emailed to me protect my privacy? Seems to me that it deprives me of information, whether or not I would respond to that information.

I understand that the phishing, scams, fraud, etc. goes on every day, but I don't like the idea of an ISP allowing part of a message through, and withholding part of it.

What am I missing?

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Now how, exactly, does this help me?

Depending on your set up, it could be blocking embedded scripts which could execute without your knowledge and infect your computer with a virus or malware. Normally it is not your ISP that is doing the blocking, but the security set up on your computer.

 

[MrBigStuff]

Re: Now how, exactly, does this help me?

The text you can read is only a small portion of the message "content". To illustrate what MTboatguy explained, if you use IE to view this page, right click in the middle of any of these posts. Scroll down to the option 'View source'. There you will be able to see all of the HTML coding that goes into displaying the thread text as well as everything else on this page. Your emails can be the same if you have HTML enabled. So to answer what are you missing? Probably all the embedded malicious stuff you didn't want anyway...

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Now how, exactly, does this help me?

I have my email set to read emails as text, I never enable HTML view, due to the fact a lot of nasty stuff can be embedded in HTML code that you will never see, but will do its nasty little deeds.

 

[generator12]

Re: Now how, exactly, does this help me?

Thanks guys. I get what you're saying although I thought that this bad stuff was usually buried in attachments.

But the message says "protect your privacy"...

That's BS.

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: Now how, exactly, does this help me?

No, the bad stuff is not always buried in the attachments, it can be buried directly in the message and execute just because you read it, to protect your privacy is what is actually happening, I suspect that your email program is the reason that things are being blocked, not your ISP Both IE's mail reader as well as Firefox/Thunderbird are both set up to block malicious code. If you want to see what is being blocked, you can change your security settings in your email program and it will display the message without any blocking. Most ISP companies could really care less what you look at or read, so it is not common for them to block things, but any anti virus, anti malware, any cookie blocker you have on your computer will block things. I know mine blocks images and I have to click a link to display those images deemed unsafe.

 

[generator12]

Re: Now how, exactly, does this help me?

Boatguy - gotcha. Thanks.