I recently acquired an Apple Mac Book and have been learning how to use it. They are renowned for their ease of use. I have several email accounts, and these are accessed by multiple windows platforms, Apple mobile devices and the new Mac Book.
For some time now I have received a form of junk mail that comes from the same source (but through different hosting companies), and in multiple flavours. I know this because the structure of the mail is highly predictable. I can receive 10-20 of them in a day, and they tend to come in a burst from apparently different sources. They all feature an unsubscribe link, which, as I have never subscribed to any of them, it is hoping I will click on it. But I don’t.
Why not?
Because if I click on that link (the same link lies under all of the links on the page), I am pretty sure it will attempt to download something onto my PC, but more importantly if I click on it, then I have confirmed that the email address that the sender has used is a valid email address and I will get more junk mail.
Mac Mail default settings
The Mac Book also received the same messages, and also downloaded remote content by default. Over a month the volume of junk from this source increased. It took a while to figure out why it was increasing.
In most forms of Mail clients (Mac Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird etc) there will be an option to download remote content when an email is received. On my Windows based computers I have this turned off deliberately. On the Mac it was turned on by default.
Turn off “Download Remote Content”
What has been happening on the Mac Book is the message from the junk source comes in. It always has images embedded in it, and they look like adverts. On the Mac Book the moment I download the email, the Mac Book also downloads the remote images. Now the sender knows that someone has accessed the email because something has downloaded the images from the server, and therefore the email address is a “good target” to send more spam mail to.
My recommendations
Irrespective of which mail client you use, turn off the setting “Download Remote Content“. This applies to Outlook as well as Mac Mail. The setting will be in your mail preferences somewhere. This means that messages are downloaded without images. That is fine and preferable, so now you are in control. Only after you establish your sender is legitimate you can choose to download remote content and see the full email.
How do I know?
If you are reading this page because it came to you through my newsletter, were there any images in the newsletter? If the newsletter came through to your email box with images included when you first viewed it, then you are downloading remote content automatically. You should turn it off.
If you received a largely text based message with no images in the newsletter, then you are protected. (the images have a small icon where they should be inviting you to download them).
Of course this applies to any computer or device, including those you have at home.