Ultimately, not being able to see the senders full address and not being able to open a message without tripping the spam email.state = opened 😉 state is what drove me away from AOL’s archaic mail system. This new change from MSFT goes it one better; I hope there’s just a small “get content” type button within the msg frame… would be nice to have a perm setting for known (address book) sources. AOL_IM = good, AOL_EMAIL = bad.

“MS Outlook 11 Cracks Down on Spam

VentureReporter.net Friday, November 01, 2002, 2:28 PM ET

As part of Microsoft’s increasing effort to tighten up security in its Outlook e-mail client, the newest version of the company’s software will block external content, such as images, when users preview messages, CNET News reported this morning. Users will be able to turn the feature off, however the default setting will be to block embedded content that is downloaded from an outside source. In the past, spammers have used embedded e-mail content to verify the address, sometimes broadcasting the address to other mass-mailers, as well as to insert cookies that track users’ online activity.”

Side thought: what if the “get content” button was commerce enabled? with the fall of tv and banner advertising, instrumented, commerce-enabled direct electronic delivery (notice i haven’t said “email”) could be huge. wonder how much leverage there is between an outlook plugin and an IE plugin… or if IE it’s just the IE control embedded in the Outlook msg frame… the lines have blured considerably…