Your Web mail account is a treasure trove of private and potentially valuable information--and thieves know it. In an online interview, one phisher claimed to make thousands of dollars every day by breaking into peoples E-mail accounts and searching for messages that contain financial details. Normally you cant tell whether youve been hacked in this way. Even if you cannily leave a juicy-sounding e-mail unread, a thief or snoop may read it and then return its status to unread. But with a little bit of know-how, you can create an electronic trip wire that will trigger whenever someone reads a rigged e-mail. Technology and Media Blog Post I.T. From TiVo to YouTube, iPods to ID theft, The Posts tech staff reports from the crossroads of technology and culture. • Sprint Partners With Google on WiMax • File-Sharing: A National Security Threat? • Sparks Still Flying Over SunRocket • Tech Blog: More Posts xml Sign Up for RSS Feed Latest Stories From PCWorld.com: • Storm Worm Gets Smarter • Making Sense of AMDs Processor Road Map • Intel Accused of Breaching European Antitrust Rules • Harry Potters Magic Cant Beat Chinese Pirates Save & Share Article Whats This? Digg Google del.icio.us Yahoo! Reddit Facebook ad_icon Click Here! I came across the idea, which takes advantage of a free Web hit counter, in a blog post by Jeremiah Grossman of WhiteHat Security. After I talked with him, we came up with a setup thats easier than the one he originally suggested. The gist of it is to keep an e-mail message in your account that includes the code for the counter. Opening the attachment trips the counter, thereby alerting you that someone was snooping. Heres how to set it up:
