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actually i did always wonder about replying to buyers questions before it was sold ie you only have memberxsdhdsh@ebay.com

I was told it was safe with gmail, and saved you logging in to ebay to reply.

Is this correct?

by the way my flash is disabled, I know I keep harping on about it, but I think that is safer.

It used to be safe with gmail. Now, your IP is in outgoing messages. So you don't want that going through ebay servers. Some of the questions from ebay buyers will have the person's non-ebay info in the 'reply-to' buried in the header. If the person chose not to keep their address hidden. If that's the case, you can email all you want.

I keep my flash turned off and only enable it selectively with noscript and flashblock. I feel it is much safer.

Unless an ebay user asks a very relevant question, if it is asked before they've placed a bid - I will not respond to them unless I can do so directly to their real email address. If a question really belongs in the listing, I'll make an exception. Every so often, I have been known to leave out a very significant detail about something in my listing...

Say Lah Vee...

The fact is replying to questions can be the difference between sale/no sale, lowbid/higher bid - questions that are relevant must be answered.

When you say 'it used to be safe with gmail' are you referring to the current displaying images problem? I still think it is safe, if your gmail IS NOT displaying images, no?
cant you just check and decide to answer or not, are you saying that you can check and at the precise moment you reply the images switch on again and you are linked - unlikely!?

I have sent mail from one of my gmail accounts to one of my hotmail accounts and to an email address on my own web host (have my own website). Gmail never used to pass my IP address along via email. Lately, when I open the test email and view headers, I see my own IP buried in there. Sometimes it's not, but most of the time, it is.

If I MUST answer a question regarding a listing, I do it via email if the email destination is NOT going to touch ebay systems. If it would touch ebay, I do my stealth thang and log into ebay, then answer via ebay message system or directly in the listing.

Keep in mind that sometimes ebay will try to GETCHA with lame questions about your listing. I never answer silly, lame, or obviously dumb questions - figuring it is some ebay T&S monkey who only has mild grasp of my language and can't form complicated sentences.

When gmail is NOT displaying images, it is safe to read them. Not entirely safe to send with them anymore even when images are not displayed. Be careful about where the destination is.

If you are sending reply via a mail client and you have images set to OFF, when you reply, the images will be on briefly to form the reply. That's where you could get linked. During the brief 'reply preview' that happens before you even send. This applies to local mail readers like Outlook Express etc.

One of these days, I'm gonna pay for a hotel conference room and give a free seminar on this type of thing. It's easier to explain and demonstrate in person. And it is important enough that I'd be willing to give my time for free, just to help people out.

I hate when outsiders try to use my own computer to spy on me. I'm sure you all feel the same way. It's infuriating.

It's an insult to my intelligence when I realize they think they can succeed in doing so.

And now, the UPDATE.

It has been 24 hours since gmail displayed images in ebay related mail.

It's good news, but I'm going to continue monitoring every few hours - just in case it might not be permanently resolved.

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with anything I have tried. I don't think *I* fixed it. Maybe I'm wrong and perhaps it was something I did. I'll keep studying.

At this time, I believe it was a glitch or maybe 'they' are still up to something and haven't got it working 100%.

Heh. Nevermind. Just got images in one of those "Your Watched Item Is Ending Soon" messages.

A sample mail header from an actual email I sent out very recently:

Note that line 2 does in fact show the IP address.
This is not the information you would be liking ebay to have.
Gmail isn't as tasty as it was in the recent past.


http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/file...mailheader.jpg

has anyone contacted gmail about this issue?

I think our multi account forumers MUST be seriously worried they are linked now, even if we are careful, some damage may have been done.

Me, I have memory of goldfish, do not remember how many accounts I answered on or emailed thru that particular day, I do them in my sleep, I havent noticed any images displayed on any of my gmail accounts, since the warning or even before....

^^^Emailed them the day the thread started. There's a bit on their forum but nothing
conclusive.:pout:

well it appears on their forum that gmail has a system bug regarding images not being displayed when it has been requested by the user to display them. apparently they are working on the issue. maybe while they are working on this issue they have inadvertently allowed certain images displayed.

^^^^exactly. Seen this B4. Fix the problem and make a worse problem. :pout:

Heh, well. Now images are displaying in all messages on more than half my accounts.

/me rubs mud and twigs in hair and heads for the hills

Yet again, sent email to google. Very similar thing happening with mine as well.:faint:

Looks like I should only check email thru aol on each separate acct. and each separate user acct --yes?

Well, trig, either do it the way you say, or hop IP's and Windows logins...

I pretty much go with the second option anyhow, but I'm not liking this whole thing. It has a funny smell.

Vicvelcro, when sending a reply, you do it from gmail.google.com ?

And not your own email reader right?

I'm not getting any images in my gmail accounts...

Aspkin,

I've been testing the problem several different ways. Normally, I use gmail from my browser. However, I also have a POP3 setup in Outlook express (for sending pure HTML messages) and an IMAP config in Outlook 2k3.

So, when the problem first popped up, a bit more than a week ago, I've been picking its guts apart from every direction I possibly can. I'm coming up pretty well empty. But if I get a break, I'll be posting here IMMEDIATELY.

I first noticed the problem while logged into gmail from my browser. My client readers on local end are config'd to block images. However, If I reply to anything, images will show up during the reply phase and return to non-display from normal message-view.

It looks like I was one of the first to have the problem. Not long after (matter of hours) a couple other people here mentioned it. Since then, it seems to be spreading wider, but randomly.

If you outlook setup is not configured correctly, it will send your computer IP address instead of Google's email server IP in your email header.

As for images showing up.. it could just be an issue with outlook when replying..

When I reply to messages it shows no images, just now I tried and no images.

I have images in emails disabled in Gmail.

It could also be error on Google's end for some people.. I did read they are trying to fix something to do with images in emails.

^^^^ google are trying to fix images, yeah. With my emails, I only use gmail & firefox.
Use no other platform. I have everything set to images disabled but each and every
email that comes in especially ebay has not worked in the same manner as it did.

Yeah. Everything was fine till about 10 days ago. I didn't change any of my settings either in the webmail or in my local clients.

It had been pretty bad for the first few days. Then it seemed to back off. Then it got really bad. Now, it's affecting more than just the ebay messages but on less gmail logins.

Too weird. Where's MY tinfoil? Anybody seen it?

Weird.. no issues for me.. maybe it'll fix itself in a week or so.

Hope so. Until then, everyone keep being careful. It's random. Even if it hasn't struck you yet, it *COULD* at any time. Don't get caught with your cheese in the breeze.

Sounds like everyone is catching the Computer Flu. Remedy: Make sure not to share your computer with other computer users in your household and wash your keyboard and mouse after each use with soap and water to prevent from other computers from being infected with the Computer Flu.

IF all else fail ~~~~>:smash:LOL

Aspkin, is it configured correctly by default? What configuring needs to be done?

I was just typing a reply saying I have not had this happen to me again so far, while I was doing it I logged into one of my gmail accounts and all the ebay emails are showing images!! AHH! :doh:

looks like outages on this feature as they try to fix it.

I have been reading this thread for a few days now. I have not had any problems with gmail like you are describing. I went and logged on today just to make sure and still no emails displaying images. It must be a random thing. I am logging into gmail.com and it redirects me to http://mail.google.com. Hopefully, this will fix itself soon.

that has been my thoughts all along. it appears google is remembering my do not display images option as of lately but when i reply to mail, the images are in the quoted text. i've disabled images in my browser completely when working with gmail and never reply to any hidden email questions that go back through ebay. so far so good. all this is only for when i'm not on the right ip, user account or computer for a stealth account.

Wasn't someone suggesting that IP might not be a factor in linking anyway?

The idea being only IP + cookies was what ebay's spiders would use to link accounts due to the fact that IPs move around all the time (esp. dialup)

got a fright this morning, my gmail was displying images for first time that Ive noticed.

I went to settings and it was allowing images option, when I had it turned off ! so I reset it on each gmail and its ok, for now..

is there some overall firefox display imagaes blocker add on? I saw ghostery add-on, anyone tried it.

See not being a techie, I thought blocking cookies also blocked web beacons, but it seems not.

What about actually typing ebay.uk or ebay.com in to the options on your firefox browser and and blocking images that way?

Doesn't ebay and paypal NOT use web beacons anymore?