Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>Does this ring a bell with any of you Micro$oft gurus?  They seem to be
>some variant of a receipt acknowledgement.

For those of us that read the list via the Usenet Newsgroup, comp.sys.hp.mpe,
we are not seeing empty messages,  Instead, we are getting numerous messages of
the form:

**********Start Quoted Message:
Your message

  To:      [log in to unmask]
  Cc:
  Subject: Image manual saga:  RESOLVED !!
  Sent:    Wed, 26 Aug 1998 21:16:59 -0400

was read on Wed, 26 Aug 1998 21:49:19 -0400
**********End Quoted Message

It would appear that it is now possible to post a message to a list or
newsgroup with such an option that everyone who READS the message (with
Outlook?)  automatically generates a message back to the list telling when it
was read.

If my hunch is right, this is not just a 3000-L problem; the internet will soon
be pelted with millions of such messages a day.  And, how many people will be
surprized to learn that when they read messages on the secret list that they
secretly subscribe to, that behind their back, Microsoft tell the world that
they have read the messages.

If Windows was Microsoft's first mass computer virus, what number is this one,
I wonder?

Steve