A newly identified snooping technology allows someone sending an e-mail to see what the recipient wrote when it is forwarded on to another user, an Internet privacy group announced Monday. It really is a wiretap and it's "very illegal and very . . .
A newly identified snooping technology allows someone sending an e-mail to see what the recipient wrote when it is forwarded on to another user, an Internet privacy group announced Monday. It really is a wiretap and it's "very illegal and very easy to do," said Richard Smith, chief technology officer for the Privacy Foundation based in Denver, in a column he wrote for the non-profit educational and research organization. The vulnerability exists in mail that uses HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

A few lines of JavaScript can be embedded in an e-mail message and allows the recipient's mail to be returned to the original sender. It only works, however, if the recipient's e-mail program is set to read JavaScript.