Peter said:
After going on-line and receiving e-mails into my inbox,
when I click on the message to read it my computer
automatically redials my service provider again. Any
ideas as to how to stop this annoying habit?
Sounds like you are opening/previewing HTML-formatted e-mails that have
linked images in them. There is just an HTML tag describing where to
get the image (i.e., the image is NOT in the message) so when you view
the HTML-formatted message to render it then your computer needs to
connect with the server that has the image in the link. While using
linked images can make the size of the message smaller, it doesn't
actually reduce the bandwidth for the recipient to get the message
because they still have to download the image denoted by the HTML tag.
Good senders should be embedding the image in the message so no link is
required. However, spammers use an old technique called web bugs or
beacons to know when you have opened their crap. They use a unique web
bug that requires you connect back to their server to get the image file
which then records the retrieval which lets the spammer record that they
hit a valid and monitored e-mail address.
You could switch to viewing messages in plain-text format only (so you
don't render the HTML-formatted message and have to retrieve any linked
images); see
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=307594. Or use anti-spam
software that nullifies linked images (they'll show as empty placeholder
boxes), like SpamPal and its HTML-Modify plug-in, but leaves embedded
images (because those are in the message and don't connect to some
server to get a file).
